If you don't have everything working yet (or maybe even if you do, go to http://continuum.io/downloads to get the Anaconda Python distribution. It will make installation a lot easier and you'll be able to edit your code inside the browser!
Install the Natural Language Toolkit:
conda install nltk
Download the base corpus:
import nltk; nltk.download()
Start the IPython notebook:
ipython notebook --matplotlib=inline
My name is Brendan Kohler. I'm a VC and co-founder of Hyperplane Venture Capital, a VC firm focused exclusively on companies bringing ML related technologies to market. I'm also co-founder of a new cloud infrastructure company called Sentenai.
twitter: @xnomagichash
email: brendan@hyperplane.vc
With me today is Stephen Diehl, chief architect at Elsen and a well known face in the Python numerical computing community. If you're as fascinated with CS as I am, you'll find his website a treasure trove of cool Python and Haskell lessons.
twitter: @smdiehl
website: http://stephendiehl.com
We'll be doing two introductory sets to start with, before everyone can break out into groups to work on their own projects.
https://github.com/xnomagichash/hacklab-ml/blob/master/Markov%20generated%20text.ipynb
https://github.com/xnomagichash/hacklab-ml/blob/master/Supervised%20and%20Unsupervised%20ML.ipynb