Machine Learning Techniques for Text

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Detecting Spam Emails

Electronic mail is a ubiquitous internet service for exchanging messages between people. A typical problem in this sphere of communication is identifying and blocking unsolicited and unwanted messages. Spam detectors undertake part of this role; ideally, they should not let spam escape uncaught while not obstructing any non-spam.

This chapter deals with this problem from a machine learning (ML) perspective and unfolds as a series of steps for developing and evaluating a typical spam detector. First, we elaborate on the limitations of performing spam detection using traditional programming. Next, we introduce the basic techniques for text representation and preprocessing. Finally, we implement two classifiers using an ...