MSE 2400 Evolution and Learning in
Computational & Robotic Agents
Spring 2016

RESOURCES


Installing Python 3.4 & NLTK 3.0

  • Instructions - Installing NLTK and Python (follow these, step-by-step)
  • Windows
    1. Install Python 3.4 (here)
    2. Install Numpy (here)
    3. Open a Command Prompt (Look for it in the Start menu under All Programs->Accessories)
    4. Change to the Python scripts directory by typing in the Command Prompt:
      • cd \Python34\Scripts
    5. Install NLTK by typing in the Command Prompt:
      • pip install -U nltk
    6. Install BeautifulSoup by typing:
      • pip install beautifulsoup4
         
  • Mac
    1. Install Python 3.4 (here)
    2. Install Easy Setup by saving ez_setup.py someplace easy to find, then double-click on the file to run it.
    3. Open a Terminal window (Look for it in Applications in the Finder)
    4. Install Pip by typing in the Terminal window:
      • sudo easy_install pip
    5. Install Numpy (optional) by typing:
      • sudo pip3 install -U numpy
    6. Install NLTK, by typing:
      • sudo pip3 install -U nltk
    7. Install BeautifulSoup by typing:
      • sudo pip3 install -U BeautifulSoup4
    8. Make sure BeautifulSoup installed correctly by typing the following into the IDLE Shell:
      • from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
         
  • NLTK Problems
    1. If you encounter error messages when running a Python program and the error mentions some package in NLTK, you can fix the problem by downloading the package. Type the following in an open IDLE shell:
      • import nltk
      • nltk.download()
    2. Once the user interface pops up, find the missing module and download it.
       
  • Missing Corpus
    • If an error message says that names or movie_reviews is missing, use the same NLTK import approach as above. Type the following into IDLE:
      • import nltk
      • nltk.download()
    • Click on the Corpora tab, and find the missing corpus and download it.
       
  • Textblob Missing
    • If you see an error message about textblob not being found, this is fixed at the command line.
    • Windows
      • Open a command prompt, and type the following:
      • cd C:\Python34\Scripts
      • pip install -U textblob
      • cd ..
      • python -m textblob.download_corpora
    • Mac
      • Open a Terminal window (Look for it in Applications in the Finder), and type the following:
      • sudo pip install -U textblob
      • sudo python -m textblob.download_corpora
      • If you get a textblob not found error message when running the last command, try this in IDLE:
        • import nltk
        • nltk.download()
        • Click on the Models tab of the window that pops up and download punkt (Punkt Tokenizer Models).
      • If you still get a textblob not found error message, or similar, try this in the Terminal window:
        • sudo -H pip3 install -U textblob
        • sudo -H python3 -m textblob.download_corpora
        • Fun fact: The reason you might need to do this is because Macs often come with Python 2.7 pre-installed so you have to use pip3 (for Python 3.x) in this case rather than just pip to install things in the right place.

Python

NLTK

Finch Robot

  • The Finch - creators website, with lots of source code examples is many languages

Fourth Paradigm Software Tools - Student Discoveries from HW 2

  • SPSS - is a data analysis tool i used for one of my classes. It is very convenient when looking at how stats interact with others. (Brad)
  • Fantasy Football Nerd - allows you to enter player names in a simulated trade, and the website processes the players respected stats and projections in order to calculate whether or not you should perform this trade for the betterment of your team. (Kyle)
  • Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator - By inputing one's data such as height and weight, the online calculator is able to evaluate the inputs and calculate one's BMI. (Emilia)
  • Sentiment Analyzer - analyze the sentiment of English text on a scale of -100 to +100, and as the website likes to advertise- it's free! (Sharon)
  • Natural Language Toolkit - a program that needs to be installed, but involves using natural language processing to build programs to use with human language data. (Morgan)
  • BigQuery - a low cost analytics database tool that is low cost and allows you to focus on analyzing data to find meaningful insights and is used by a wide spectrum of organizations. (Emily)
  • Splunk - organizes data into an easily accessible index that is perfect for searching specific "text strings" or phrases, and also allows you to write code in any language. (Emma)
  • Hadoop - is a software library that allows for the organization of data from different clusters of computers. (Jake)
  • Meltwater - assess the tone of the commentary as a representation for a brand,  and also helps me discover what my target audience is attracted to based on the world of online data. (Eunice)
  • AutoSummarizer - is a form of Natural Language Processing that summarizes articles of longform text. It is an example of automatic summarization and their parent company publishes their API and algorithm for implementation. It is is an online tool that generates a summary from the original source or text it was copied from. (Nick, Mike)
  • TweetStats - conduct some sentiment analysis on your Twitter account as well as provide other information about tweets and related statistics. (Charlie)
  • Box and Whisker Plot -  is a graphical method of displaying variation in a set of data that can also provide additional detail while allowing multiple sets of data to be displayed in the same graph. (Olivia)
  • SETI@Home - allows anyone to use their idle computers to process data from radio telescopes radio looking for possible narrow-bandwith signals from space in the effort to detect extraterrestrial life. (Kinjal)
  • Affectiva -  judges the emotional response of participants to visual stimulus by employing sophisticated computer vision algorithms. (Kendall)
  • Google Analytics - is a tool used by marketers and website owners to track, report, and describe all website traffic. (Daniela)
  • Terracotta - searches for the desired data by using many resources which include data sheets, analyst reports, and white pages. It also has a wide array of industrial resources which include financial services, eCommerce, Media and Entertainment, and more. (Xavier)
  • Finds Unusual Words in Arbitrary Texts - analyzes text and determine if a word is unusual. The author has a list of what he deems as common words, and if a word does not match one of the common words from the list it is deemed "unusual." (James)
  • Quora - a data intensive website that always you to search through a huge data base to find the answer to the question you might have. (Jordan)
  • SkyTree - assists users in building more effective models using a series of algorithms that break down massive data sets. (Tim)
  • Teleport Flock - A tool for groups whose members may be spread throughout different states or countries; uses their locations and returns the most efficient city for a meeting. Returns travel costs, total distances travelled, hotel information, and more in a nicely formatted layout. (John)
  • Text Analyzer - allows you to find the most frequent phrases and frequencies of words. Non-English language texts are supported. It also counts number of words, characters, sentences and syllables. Also calculates lexical density. (Will)
  • Grammarly - is a tool that checks your spelling and grammar across multiple online applications. Grammarly gives you weekly grammar/spelling statistics -- tracking progress and providing suggestions for improvements. (Dan)

 

Last updated: 03/30/2016