Math & Stats for Language Technology

Abstract

Like so much of human behavior, language opens itself up to formal analysis by mathematics and statistical processes. This includes everything from describing the motions of the physical articulators to mimicking auditory processes in artificial neurons. In order to make meaningful progress in our field of research, we often require a thorough familiarity with various statistical tools. This chapter surveys mathematical approaches that are relevant to certain subareas within speech and language processing in a fairly introductory manner, using examples relating to our domain. By no means is this survey exhaustive–for almost every tool we discuss, you will find more intricate varieties that can be more suitable to your task, so you are encouraged to dig deeper by following the included references and by doing your own research.