Class Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30AM to 10:50AM. Room: WLH 2005. Piazza: piazza.com/ucsd/spring2022/cse151a.

Additonal Course Policy for COVID-19

While the university does not close, we are still in a pandemic. Here are some additional policies specifically designed to better protect our students in this course from COVID-19 risks.

• First-week lectures online. We will deliver the first-week lectures online, as the students on the super-long waitlist may want to attend the first lecture too and we will likely flood the physical classroom.
  • Zoom link for the first week: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/93540989128
• Attendance is optional. Podcast is enabled. You can also check out my previous offering, which has Zoom videos.
• Midterm is take-home instead of in-class.

Overview

This course mainly focuses on introducing machine learning methods and models that are useful in analyzing real-world data. It will cover classical regression & classification models, clustering methods, and deep neural networks. No previous background in machine learning is required, but all participants should be comfortable with programming, and with basic optimization and linear algebra.

There is no textbook required, but here are some recommended readings:

• The Elements of Statistical Learning by Trevor Hastie, ‎Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman.
• Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques by Jiawei Han et al.
• Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher M. Bishop.
• Dive into Deep Learning book by Aston Zhang et al.

Prerequisites

1. Ability to code in Python: functions, control structures, string handling, arrays and dictionaries.

2. Familiarity with basic probability, at the level of CSE 21 or CSE 103.

3. Familiarity with basic linear algebra, at the level of Math 18 or Math 20F.

TAs and Tutors

• Teaching Assistants:
  • Chengyu Dong (cdong AT ucsd.edu)
  • Weitang Liu (wel022 AT ucsd.edu)
  • Rajeshwari Sah (rasah AT ucsd.edu)
  • Zilong Wang (ziw049 AT ucsd.edu)

Office Hours

• Jingbo Shang
  • Office Hour: Wednesdays, 10 AM to 11 AM
  • Zoom link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/my/jshang
• Chengyu Dong
  • Office Hour: Wednesday 2 PM to 3 PM 4 PM to 5 PM 5 PM to 6 PM
  • Zoom link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/5573458249 CSE basement room B215
• Weitang Liu
  • Office Hour: Mondays 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM
  • CSE Basement Room B215
• Rajeshwari Sah
  • Office Hour: Wednesdays 7 PM to 8 PM
  • Zoom link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/94987933871
• Zilong Wang
  • Office Hour: Friday 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM
  • CSE Basement Room B215

Note: all times are in Pacific Time.

Grading

• Homework: 15% each. Your lowest (of five) homework grades is dropped (or one homework can be skipped).
• Midterm: 40%.
• You should complete all work individually.
• Late submissions are NOT accepted.

Lecture Schedule

Recording Note: Please download the recording video for the full length. Dropbox website will only show you the first one hour.

HW Note: All HWs due before the lecture time 9:30 AM PT in the morning.

(the schedule is tentative)

Homework (60%)

Your lowest (of five) homework grades is dropped (or one homework can be skipped).

• HW1: Concepts and Evaluations (15%). This homework mainly focuses on the machine learning concepts and how to evaluate different tasks.
• HW2: KNN and Linear Models (15%). This homework mainly focuses on nearest neighbor, least-square regression, logistic regression, and regularization.
• HW3: SVM and Clustering (15%). This homework mainly focuses on support vector machine, k-means, Gaussian Mixture, and PCA.
• HW4: Ensemble Learning (15%). This homework mainly focuses on decision tree, random forest, and AdaBoost.
• HW5: Neural Networks (15%). This homework mainly focuses on implementation of some simple neural networks.

Midterm (40%)

It is an open-book, take-home exam, which covers all lectures given before the Midterm. Most of the questions will be open-ended. Some of them might be slightly more difficult than homework. You will have 24 hours to complete the midterm, which is expected for about 2 hours.

• Start: May 5, 9:30 AM PT
• End: May 6, 9:30 AM PT
• Midterm problems download: here
• Please make your submissions on Gradescope.