Machine Learning (COMP-652)
Fall 2011

Lecture Schedule

Date Topic Materials
Sep.1 Introduction. Types of machine learning. Linear regression. Overfitting and cross-validation Lecture 1 slides
Bishop, Sec. 1.1
NY Times Article on Statistics
If you need to catch up on the math, a brief probability review and linear algebra review from Stanford University
Sep.6 Overfitting and bias-variance error decomposition. Linear models with basis functions. Gradient descent Lecture 2 slides
Bishop, Sec. 3.1, 3.2
Sep.8 More on linear methods for regression. Analysis of least-squares as maximum-likelihood learning. L2 and L1 regularization. Bayesian learning Lecture 3 slides
Bishop, Sec. 3.1, 3.3
Sep.13 Classification. Generative vs. discriminative learning. Naive Bayes. Lecture 4 slides
Bishop, Sec. 4.2.
Sep.15 Gaussian Discriminant Analysis. Logistic regression. Lecture 5 slides
Bishop, Sec. 4.3
Sep.20 Feed-forward neural networks Lecture 6 slides
Bishop, Sec. 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5
Sep.22 Instance-based learning Lecture 7 slides
Bishop, Sec. 2.5
Sep.27 Decision trees Lecture 8 slides
Bishop, Sec. 1.6, 14.4
Sep. 29 Ensemble methods. Boosting Lecture 9 slides
Bishop, Sec. 14.2 14.3
Ensemble methods in machine learning by Tom Dietterich (2000). See also the boosting web site
Oct. 4 Perceptrons. Support Vector Machines Lecture 10 slides
Bishop, Sec. 4.1, 7.1.
See also the kernel machines web site
Oct. 6 Non-linear SVM. Kernels. Kernelizing other algorithms. Lecture 11 slides
Bishop, Sec. 6.1, 6.2, 7.1
See also the kernel machines web site
Oct. 11 Computational learning theory. PAC model. VC dimension. Lecture 12 slides
Mitchell, Chapter 7
See also the computational learning theory web site
Oct. 13 Wrap-up of computational learning theory. Experimental comparisons of algorithms Lecture 13 slides
Mitchell, Chapter 5
See also ROC Graphs: Notes and Practical Considerations for Researchers by Tom Fawcett (2004).
Oct. 18 Active learning and semi-supervised learning Lecture 14 slides
Active learning tutorial by Burr Settles (2010)
Oct. 20 Clustering Lecture 15 slides
Bishop, Sec. 9.1
Oct. 25 Expectation Maximization (EM) and mixture of Gaussians. Lecture 16 slides
Bishop, Sec. 9.2, 9.3, 9.4
Oct. 27 Dimensionality reduction. PCA. Lecture 17 slides
Bishop, Sec. 12.1
Nov. 1 Midterm exam. Covering lectures 1-12. You are allowed one double-sided "cheat sheet"
Midterm from 2010.
Nov. 3 Kernel PCA and other non-linear dimensionality reduction methods Lecture 18
Bishop, Sec. 12.3, 12.4
Nov. 8 Introduction to graphical models. Undirected models. Belief propagation Lecture 19
Bishop, Sec. 8.3, 8.4
See also graphical models tutorial by Koller et al (2007).
Nov. 10 No class
 
Nov. 15 Time series data. Hidden Markov Models Lecture 20 slides
Bishop, Sec. 13.1, 13.2
See also HMM tutorial by Rabiner (1989)
Nov. 17 More on time series data. Kalman and particle filters. Bayes nets. Importance sampling. Gibbs sampling Lecture 21 slides
Bishop, Sec. 8.1, 8.2, 13.3
See also Particle filter tutorial by Arulampalam et al (2002)
See also graphical models tutorial by Koller et al, 2007.
Nov. 22 MCMC methods in general. Learning in graphical models revisited Lecture 22

Nov. 24 No lecture  
Nov. 29 Reinforcement learning Lecture 23
Dec. 1 More reinforcement learning. Current frontiers and open problems in machine learning