Web Scraping & NLP: Theory + practical!

CODE RESOURCES --> https://github.com/central-ldn-data-sci/web-scraping-and-nlp-CLDSPN

Natural language processing (NLP) is a popular field of data science. It focuses on the analysis of unstructured text i.e blocks of text. At a previous event, we used NLP to predict if a comment scrapped from YouTube is from a troll using word frequency analysis. A more common use-case is in sentiment analysis which evaluates how negative or positive a piece of text is. This is a useful feature in determining the objectivity of texts such as news articles.

In this meetup we will show you how to scrape text from websites using Python (and a tool in python called 'beatutifulsoup') and then how you can perform NLP on the scraped text. By the end of the event, we aim to get everyone analysing the text of different websites automatically using a scraping to NLP pipeline.

Meetup structure:

• We will start with a short talk on scraping and NLP

• We will then show a live walkthrough of the task at hand

• Then it all hands on with the code we prepared to get everyone scraping and analysing!

• Then Pizza!

Learning Outcomes:

We aim to get everyone to the level were they have good intuition around scraping form the web as well as some basic NLP knowledge.

Software Requirements:

Please ensure that you have Annaconda Navigator (https://www.anaconda.com/download/) installed with Python 3.

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As usual, this meetup will be very relaxed and we encourage people of all skills in python to come along and learn from each other. We'll work on the problem for a few hours then have some pizza and drinks thanks to our new sponsor Pivigo.

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Bring:

• Laptops, Charging Cords, an Inquisitive Spirit

HOW TO FIND IT

Please head to Norfolk place (W2 1PE - see photos), and it's at the faculty of medicine. The entrance (see photos) is opposite the Cambridge wing and might be behind the mobile MRI scanner (it moves so it might not!). On the day go in and speak to the person on the desk and tell them that you are here for the data science meetup, they will hopefully let you in and explain where to go.