CS 512  - Machine Learning

Fall 2009

SYLLABUS

LECTURES

PROJECT

READING MATERIAL

 

 

Supplementary SLIDES

HOMEWORKS

 

 

    Mt2 topics: Anything that was modified between [11/11/2009 – 12/16/2009 ] = 6-eigen+NNs+7…+8…), however I will not ask more than 10/100pts worth about SVMs.

    Tomorrow (Thursday) we will cover classifier combination.

    December 7: I have posted hw 4, under website/hws/

    December 3: I have updated 4-backprop-issues to summarize BP alternatives and include some of the BP alternatives. You are not responsible of 4-SKIP-BP-alternatives.ppt.

                           Today we will see Radial Basis Function networks.

     1 December - Syllabus and Project documents are updated. In particular, Midterm2 will be only 1 hr and 1 week later (on Dec. 24th), to make up for the lost time. Also, those who want to do a paper presentation as a project should select them on a first come first served basis.

     5 November: Hw3 is posted and requires Matlab programming – due next MONDAY (postponed a bit)

     Re: MT1:  Midterm is closed book and I may give you a little cheat sheet, but only the required information is not very necessary to memorize (i.e. no cheat sheet for definition of covariance matrix).  I will ask you about finding ML estimates for certain problems (will use derivation and minimization knowledge); I will ask you several questions from Bayes approach (including simple probability calculation)… The exam is up to (of course not including Neural networks). Depending on the duration of the exam, I may use the remaining half hour to solve the exam questions (if it remains).

     29 October: Hw2 is posted.  Project-2009 document is added (project topic suggestions due Nov 18th, if your own topic).  Happy Republic Day!

     -22 October: 1hr lecture on probability and intro. to Bayesian decision process

      -     In the last question of hw1, I had asked you to do the disjunctive question (Q9) in full and asked how big ..., *in addition*. 

            But I notice it was not clear. Please send the full homework by Thursday. (email or in class is fine). Please see the explanation

      I added for the last question about time complexity (polynomial time), for non-CS people.

-          HW1 is posted (due on Oct. 14).

-          Slides is slightly modified (slide 17) to pose the question asked in class (and give a hint – its about problem statement/representation and assumptions)

    

     Description:   

This is a introductory level course on machine learning. Topics covered will include theoretical aspects of learning and main approaches to pattern recognition (Bayesian approaches, Decision trees, NNs,…). The emphasis will be on what can be learned, rather than how to do it (which is what is covered in EE566-Pattern Recognition course). Some of the content will be tailored according to student composition.

This course is especially intended for students working in the area of pattern recognition or related fields, to deepen their understanding of machine learning/pattern recognition topics. Students who have already taken EE566-Pattern Recognition may find a significant material being repeated in this course (see the syllabus): while there will be a significant overlap, this course will cover some  topics that were not covered sufficiently in EE566, particularly theoretical aspects, neural network approaches, support vector machines and different learning paradigms.

Prereq: none. Undergraduate level Probability and Linear Algebra helpful. Matlab or other Toolboxes will be used for homework assignments.

Book: Machine Learning by T. Mitchell (ML).

Supplementary book: Introduction to Machine Learning (Ethem), by Ethem Alpaydin.

Supplementary book: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (PRML), by Christopher Bishop.

We will follow and cover the ML book until the end of Chapter 9.

We will also read important research articles on the topic and some student presentations/discussions are expected.

Course Schedule: Wed: 10:40-12:30 FENS L058

                           Thu:  11:40-12:30 in FENS L065

Instructor: Berrin Yanikoglu (berrin@sabanciuniv.edu, FENS 2056)

Office Hours: Walk-in.

Grading: Tentative grading: in-class midterm1: %25; in-class midterm2: %25; in-class final: 30% ; project: 10%; homeworks: 10%

               Homeworks may be loosely graded (e.g. Excellent/Good/OK/Insufficient).

Tentative Syllabus: You may find the lecture slides under Lectures/. In general, they are sufficient to follow the material, but reading the respective chapters and looking at more exercises are necessary for making sure you understand everything.

Note that I consider the lecture slides as sufficient in terms of content that you should learn in this course (beware of clearly marked and hidden slides that are extra).

However, you can use any pattern recognition books (I indicate corresponding chapters next to the week’s topic) to support your understanding of the lecture material.

Week1:  28 September-2 October
ML1 - Intro to concepts and course - 2 hrs

Week 2: 5-9 October

ML2 - Concept Learning


Week 3: 12-16 October
ML3 - Decision Trees


Week4: 19-23 October
No class on Wednesday due to meeting

ML6/PRML 1- Bayesian Learning (Bayes formula, naive Bayes): 1hr

Week5: 26-30 October (29th is a holiday)
ML6/PRML 1 - Bayesian Learning ctd.

 

Week6: 2-6 November

Ethem 5/ PRML 1: Parameter Estimation and Multivariate  methods


Week7: 9-13 November

Ethem 5/ PRML 1: Parameter Estimation and Multivariate  methods  – 1hr

ML4 - ANN (also in Ethem Chp 11 & PRML Chp. 5) – 2hrs


Week8: 16-20 November
Midterm 1 – 1.5 hrs+ on Wednesday – no further class

ML4 – Midterm review + ANN cont.


Week9: 23-27 November (27 is holiday)

No classes due to extended holiday!


Week10: 30 November-4 December

ML4 - ANN cont.


Week 11: 7-11 December

Lecture slides and many books: Bias/Variance issue that was skipped from previous weeks

Ethem 6, Lecture slides: Dimensionality reduction introduction (feature selection, extraction, PCA)
Lecture slides,
ML8,Ethem8: Non-parametric density estimation (Parzen windows, KNN)

 

Week 12: 14-18 December

Ethem 7 - Linear Discriminant Analysis and Support Vector Machines : 2hrs

Ethem15 - Classifier Combination: 1hr

 

Week 13: 21-25 December

Ethem15 - Classifier Combination: ctd.

Midterm 2 – 1 hrs on Thursday - no class

Topics included: NNs onward (what is not covered in Mt1, upto and including SVMs).

 

Week 14: 28 December- January 1st (Jan 1st: is holiday)

Ethem14 - Assessing & Comparing Class. Algorithms

ML7 - Computational learning Theory (PAC learning, VC dimension,…): 2+hrs

           

Week 15: 4-9 January

Paper/Project presentations

 

 

Updated Dec 21, 2009