I recommend the courses from statistics.com - price reductions for
educators...  Do you see any possible applications for libraries?



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Bruce <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 4:09 PM
Subject: online courses- Sentiment Analysis, Text Mining
To: [log in to unmask]


Dear ... ....:

How are you (your organization/product/service) regarded in
cyberspace?  Thrifty with money and time, people are unsparing
with their opinions using Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Flixster,
blogs, web forums, product reviews...

Sentiment analysis is the relatively new art and science of
distilling useful data from this mass of unstructured text.
The first annual conference on this subject was just held in
NYC (google "Sentiment Analysis Symposium"); one of the main
presenters was Nitin Indurkhya and his staff from eBay.  He will
present two online courses at statistics.com in June and July:

Jun 3 - Jul 1:  Text Mining (4 weeks)
Jul 8 - Jul 29:  Sentiment Analysis (3 weeks)

"Text Mining" will introduce the essential techniques of text
mining -the extension of data mining's standard predictive
methods to unstructured text. This course will discuss these
standard predictive modeling techniques (some familiarity with
these methods will help), and will devote considerable attention
to the data preparation and handling methods that are required
to transform unstructured text into a form in which it can be
mined.  Access to software is provided with the course text.

"Sentiment Analysis" introduces you to the algorithms,
techniques and software used in sentiment analysis. Their
use will be illustrated by reference to existing applications,
particularly product reviews and opinion mining. The course
will try to make clear both the capabilities and the
limitations of these applications. For real-world
applications, sentiment analysis draws heavily on work
in computational linguistics and text-mining. At the
completion of the course, a student will have a good
idea of the field of sentiment analysis, the current
state-of-the-art and the issues and problems that are
likely to be the focus of future systems.

Nitin Indurkhya is co-author of "Text Mining" (Springer), and
co-editor of the "Handbook of Natural Language Processing" (CRC).
Dr. Indurkhya is Principal Research Scientist at eBay.
Previously, he was a Professor at the School of Computer
Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales
(Australia), as well as the founder and president of
Data-Miner Pty Ltd, an Australian company engaged in
data-mining consulting and education.  Participants can
ask questions and exchange comments directly with Dr. Indurkhya
via a private discussion forum throughout each course.

For details and to register:
http://www.statistics.com/courses/data-mining-2/textmining/
http://www.statistics.com/courses/data-mining-2/sentiment-analysis/

The courses take place online at statistics.com in a series of
weekly lessons and assignments, and require about 15 hours per
week.  Participate at your own convenience; there are no set
hours when you must be online.

Peter Bruce
[log in to unmask]

P.S. Just let me know if you no longer wish to receive our
course announcements.

statistics.com 612 N. Jackson St. Arlington VA 22201 USA