This document provides an overview of machine learning applications in natural language processing and text classification. It discusses common machine learning tasks like part-of-speech tagging, named entity extraction, and text classification. Popular machine learning algorithms for classification are described, including k-nearest neighbors, Rocchio classification, support vector machines, bagging, and boosting. The document argues that machine learning can be used to solve complex real-world problems and that text processing is one area with many potential applications of these techniques.