

PhD in Programming Languages or Masters in NLP? - heykell

I am accepted to a top rank research institute in Germany for a PhD in Programming Languages (Max Planck Institute for Software and Systems), and also an Erasmus Mundus Double Degree Masters program in Language Communication and Tools (1 year at Univ. of Melbourne, 1 year at Univ. of Saarland). I can't decide on which one to go. I am interested in NLP but I don't really like statistical part of it. I don't have much experience on programming languages. I would like to work after my PhD in a research lab. Would I easily find a job on NLP after Masters
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barry-cotter
My ex did her Masters in Uni-Saarland, and based on her experience it isn't
that hard to find a job with that Masters, but you must be willing to travel
to get it (although she was at least a competent programmer by the time she
finished her Masters.)

If you want to do productive research in NLP you will have to master either
semantics and predicate logic or statistics, particularly Hidden Markov
Models. Statistical approaches are much, much more productive, both in real
world uses, and in terms of getting papers published.

If you are even thinking of doing the Masters you probably should, a doctorate
is training for academia, in the overwhelming majority of cases if you don't
want to be an academic you shouldn't do it.

 _The_ site for linguistics jobs.

<http://linguistlist.org/jobs/>

