Statistical Natural Language Processing in Python | Hacker News Reader

Statistical Natural Language Processing in Python

nbviewer.ipython.org

66 pointshashx10 comments

It took me a while to recognize they were Norvig's notes. Only after I saw the spell checker code it kicked in and then I paid attention to the username in the URL. Perhaps next time it would be nice to make it clear in the title... just my 2 cents.

Modern browsers are hiding the url, and title more and more.

In this case the title is actually empty.

+1 nice!

I don't usually use Python (favoring Clojure, Java 8, JavaScript, and Ruby) but I am installing IPython right now so I can play with this interactively. As someone else already pointed out these are Peter Norvig's notes.

Unusually for an online notebook, the cells have been saved in an unexecuted state. Making the page uninteresting if not worthless.

There's a download link on the top-right.

Yeah, I can also execute it by myself but that's not the point.

Well at first glance I assumed that it couldn't be run correctly because of the dependency on "big.txt". But digging a little deeper it turns out you can download that file (which happens to be the Project Gutenburg text of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) from Norvig's website [1], so I suppose it is useful after all. But not exactly user-friendly.

[1] http://norvig.com/ipython/big.txt

Really? You get a page like this and you complain that you have to download and run the code yourself? Why bother learning anything - someone else will do it for you and save you the bother.

Edit: OK, I've just re-read that and realized how snarky it is. I'm going to let it stand, but I guess I need to go away and interact with real people in the real world for a bit. Maybe for a lot.

Snarky or not, you're right. This is a perfect instance of how some in the HN community can act like spoiled brats.

"Wow, this is so useless, it doesn't comply to my standards! Go away Norvig, you uninteresting roach!"

I hope you have a lot to show for, adwhit. Maybe you'll bring humanity a step closer to enlightenment by writing another flappy bird clone or something.

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