Ciara Anderson, PhD

What is TFIDF?

Since a computer cannot analyze text in its raw form, it must be converted into a numerical format – vectorization. One way to vectorize text data is TFIDF. When dealing with textual data, it’s important to know which words are most important in a given document.

What are Intents and Slots in Alexa Skill Building?

Intents and slots are central to the Alexa skill building process, but what are they exactly? 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 Intents consist of names and a list of “utterances”.

What is SSML?

You’ve probably heard of HTML but possibly not SSML. Where HTML is used to describe the structure of a web page, SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) is an XML based markup language used in speech synthesis applications. It controls aspects of synthesized speech such as pronunciation, emphasis, pitch and rate.

What is npm?

npm (Node Package Manager) is on online repository used by Node.js developers. It contains multitudes of libraries of pre-packaged code that are used by millions of people across various applications. Much of it is free and open-source. Usually you will use an npm package for something that is not unique to your app, meaning – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

What is Node.js?

Since I’m refreshing (I’ve done a little before) and learning new material in Node, I thought I’d make a few posts covering the basics. For anyone interested, I’m finding Andrew Mead’s Complete Node.js Developer on Udemy very helpful so far!