Sometimes I wonder who user6726 is... he knows practically everything o_0

:) Thank you it's like the Invisible Man, exactly, has he never mentioned about himself here? @user6726

@WiccanKarnak No, it was the problem Common Sense, if I remember correctly (it had the word plumbus in it). I have two years of eligibility left for IOL: this year/test/whatever it is, and the next one

This problem, @WiccanKarnak

Oh got that

That was one heck of a problem

I'm assuming you practice with the problems for NACLO ?

@WiccanKarnak, have you looked at this sample problem for the IOL? It's stereotypical Japanese words written in braille.

That, i consider was really easy

I do

Practice from wherever possible

The problem was definitely easy. I just find it funny how they had to use such stereotypical japanese words. The final part of LOLWUT is basically a freebie if you have a brain.

Yeah exactly *2

How did you come to know about NACLO at the first place though?

I want to be a computational linguist.

So when I searched that up, one of the things that popped up was NACLO.

Ooh we need to talk a lot then

Wait, you want to be a computational linguist as well?

It's the same with me then, I want to be in CL too

Yes

Wow, I barely ever find a person that knows what that is, let alone someone who wants to be one.

Same here

This is the best christmas-sy thing that has happened to me

Same here. Speaking of that, I got the IPA handbook for Christmas. The IPA (association) doesn't know how to format to save their lives

?

They used beta instead of ß

For a nasalized /i/, they had an i with tilde, but it still had the dot on it as well.

Lol ok but the official has a curvy B right?

It was being used as an example for the German orthography

@Zacharý hahaha

I laughed too.

Wait so you will be applying for colleges according to CL right?

I came to CL through NACLO though

Well... there's basically no colleges that have a separate CL degree. So I'm probably going to apply based on a combination of the Mathematics program, Computer Science program, and the Linguistics program.

Stanford has it I guess

I know no one else has, but do you have a shareable list of colleges by the params you have

Oh, I was only focusing on undergraduate programs previously. Yeah, Stanford does have a graduate program in CL

Wait, by MY params, or the ones that have CL programs?

Your params as in CS maths and ling. a small diversion, are you into comics as well

I also focused on closeness to my current location, so I don't think they would help you. And no, I'm not really into comics. Most of my free time is spent either doing mathematics, programming, or code-golfing.

Ok and ah so there you are, yet another code guy! (That's not some polarized view stuff, just that every other person I meet at the Linguistics camp/ interested in linguistics turns out to be deep into coding)

Linguistics camps, you lucky sun of a gun! I The only person I've met in real life that's interested in linguistics isn't in computer science, just linguistics, and just as a hobby.

Hey no camps as in round 2 prep ones

We don't have have it generally

Plus the state/zone I live in, absolutely no one knows about

Plus I have to travel to an entirely different state to go to the camp and stay there for a week

India

Oh god, that sounds awful. I think USA has online programs for preparing people for the IOL (not round 2). I have to do somewhat of the same thing, only on a smaller scale: I have to go to an entirely different school to take the NACLO exam.

Lol ok

Naclo has a round 2 and then a camp right?

And if I make the invitational round, I'll be taking that round on the first day of my break.

@WiccanKarnak Yeah, that's how it works IIRC

But question still remains, how did you get interested in CL

I've always been into CS. And I got interested in linguistics by a dictionary. It had an OLD version of the IPA table in it, and that turned into an interest in the IPA. The interest in the IPA led to an interest in linguistics. And CL came from the combination of CS and Linguistics.

Have you read up any introductory books on ling?

If online information counts, then yes. Hard to come across physical books for this stuff. The IPA handbook is the first physical thing I had for linguistics, other than that old dictionary,

Why do you ask?

Because there are some really good books which will get you further interested into Linguistics and are fun to read like Victoria Fromkin's

Stanford does have a joint undergraduate CS-Linguistics major

You can ping for more, I have done at least 4 or 5 of intro ones and also some really nicely into Linguistics books like Dying Languages ...

@Zacharý see I did remember right

Yep, you did remember correctly

Do you have school today?

No, I do not until around the beginning of January, did you?

I do but it's evening here

Anyways GTG homework to do! Really nice talking to you!

You as well. I'll try to wake up around the time I did today.

More like amazing

:-)

@Zacharý yeah I get that issokay we can talk in gaps too 😁

That's probably how it's going to occur after my break

Lol

Bye

Cya

Whenever you get back, WiccanKarnak: I was looking through the contestants of IOL for the different countries, and I found someone from Latvia that competed in IOL for five years in a row : Estere Šeinkmane from 2009 to 2013

Heh, I want to get into CL as well! Currently I'm majoring in linguistics and statistics :)

And you guys are so talkative, I love how you're keeping the chat alive :3

Yep :3

What are you guys planning to do about CL though? Will you prefer stuff that's closer to NLP, or do you plan to investigate linguistic questions using computational tools, as they say?

(Personally I'm inclined towards the latter, though I'm open to doing things related to the former as well)

For me, presumably the former.

Hmm, then you should probably focus mostly on CS, and just use your leftover credits for ling courses. These days neural nets are taking over everything in ML and there isn't much ling left in NLP, heh

Yeah, I am mainly focusing on CS and mathematics already.

Have you heard the Jelinek quote? 'Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recogniser goes up' :P

No, but that is oddly funny

So, anyway, what have you been studying in CS and maths? I minor in maths so I have a fair background in it (and I do calc and linear algebra routinely in stats), though I haven't had much 'higher' maths beyond elementary analysis.

I'll be starting Series in my Calculus class after break is over, as well as starting my AP Statistics class. CS at our school is complete crap, so I've mostly just been programming on-and-off. I've studied a bit of material from Calculus III on my own time, and I probably should look into linear algebra a bit more,

That's cool ^^ Series should be fairly straightforward, even if your teacher chooses to do it rigorously (dunno what the AP curriculum though). The basic idea is just that you'll have to learn a bunch of tests (comparison, limit comparison, root, ratio etc.) and you have to tell which one to use to prove convergence and divergence. With experience you should be able to tell which one to use right after you see the series (e.g. if you see a factorial, you should be thinking of ratio)

And stats should be fun - my first stats class in college was a real eye-opener. I suggest you take a look at a slightly more rigorous (but still accessible) textbook like John E Freund's, which covers a bit of decision theory. It really helps you get into that statistical mindset which I think is really valuable for any kind of research.

Yeah, that seems like it's going to be fun.