

Ask HN: can I teach myself the skills needed to succeed in NLP/IR/PA/DM? - brosephius

where NLP = natural language processing, IR = information retrieval, PA = predictive analytics, and DM = data mining (had to fit the title in 80 chars :P)<p>for example: http://www.recordedfuture.com<p>their jobs page makes it sound like they want PhD geniuses. I don't have a PhD and don't really think a PhD program is right for me. that being the case, is it possible for me to do anything meaningful in this sort of field, even on a smaller scale?<p>I have some textbooks and read articles and blogs on the field, but I get the impression that to do anything commercially viable it has to be serious, grad-level work, not some toy someone like myself could build.<p>is this the case, or are there examples of successful products in these fields built by people that weren't hardcore experts?
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waterside81
There was a previous thread similar to what you're asking:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1535869>

For an example of successful products, check out my startup
<http://www.repustate.com>

I have a BSc in comp sci but I'm by no means an expert in NLP. My partner & I
just read a lot of academic papers and read up on the ideas we needed.

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pedalpete
There are people who would ask the same thing about any programming field. I
personally believe that with the tools and community available to you, it
isn't necessary to have a PhD. But then again, I don't have one, and I'm just
getting into learning NLP. I've done some data mining in the past, though it
is what a PhD might consider trivial, it suited the purpose and solved the
problem.

With respect to the link you posted. If those guys were really so brilliant at
NLP, they wouldn't need you to type your query so specifically in 3 different
search boxes. NLP should be able to figure that out for you.

I guess it depends on what you are looking to do. With my current project, I'm
trying to extract meaning from tweets. I'm hoping to be able to get it to the
point where I can put most tweets into four or five buckets of general
category (self-promotion, making plans, sharing links, congratulatory). Once I
have that proof of concept, then I'll look at either continuing myself, or
getting help from somebody with more experience.

If I were you, I'd take the first few steps yourself and then see how you feel
about it. That way you'll also be more knowledgeable if you decide to look for
somebody with more experience.

