Machine Learning
CS771A
Autumn 2016
Instructor: Piyush Rai: (office: KD-319, email: piyush AT cse DOT iitk DOT ac DOT in)
Office Hours: Tuesday 12-1pm (or by appointment)
Q/A Forum: Piazza (please register)
Class Location: L-16 (lecture hall complex)
Timings: WF 6:00-7:30pm

Background and Course Description

Machine Learning is the discipline of designing algorithms that allow machines (e.g., a computer) to learn patterns and concepts from data without being explicitly programmed. This course will be an introduction to the design (and some analysis) of Machine Learning algorithms, with a modern outlook, focusing on the recent advances, and examples of real-world applications of Machine Learning algorithms. This is supposed to be the first ("intro") course in Machine Learning. No prior exposure to Machine Learning will be assumed. At the same time, please be aware that this is NOT a course about toolkits/software/APIs used in applications of Machine Learning, but rather on the principles and foundations of Machine Learning algorithms, delving deeper to understand what goes on "under the hood", and how Machine Learning problems are formulated and solved.

Pre-requisites

MSO201A/equivalent, CS210/ESO211/ESO207A; Ability to program in MATLAB/Octave. In some cases, pre-requisites may be waived (will need instructor's consent).

Grading

There will be 4 homework assignments (total 40%) which may include a programming component, a mid-term (20%), a final-exam (20%), and a course project (20%)

Reference materials

There will not be any dedicated textbook for this course. In lieu of that, we will have lecture slides/notes, monographs, tutorials, and papers for the topics that will be covered in this course. Some recommended, although not required, reference books are listed below (in no particular order):

Schedule (Tentative)

Date Topics Readings/References Deadlines Slides/Notes
July 28 Course Logistics and Introduction to Machine Learning Linear Algebra review, Probability review, Matrix Cookbook, MATLAB review, [JM15], [LBH15] slides
Supervised Learning
Aug 3 Learning by Computing Distances: Distance from Means and Nearest Neighbors Distance from Means, CIML Chapter 2 slides
Aug 5 Learning by Asking Questions: Decision Tree based Classification and Regression Book Chapter, Info Theory notes DT - visual illustration slides
Aug 10 Learning as Optimization, Linear Regression Optional: Some notes, Some useful resources on optimization for ML slides
Aug 12 Learning via Probabilistic Modeling, Probabilistic Linear Regression Murphy (MLAPP): Chapter 7 (sections 7.1-7.5) slides
Aug 17 Learning via Probabilistic Modeling: Logistic and Softmax Regression Murphy (MLAPP): Chapter 8 (sections 8.1-8.3) slides
Aug 19 Online Learning via Stochastic Optimization, Perceptron Murphy (MLAPP): Chapter 8 (section 8.5) slides
Aug 24 Learning Maximum-Margin Hyperplanes: Support Vector Machines Intro to SVM, Wikipedia Intro to SVM, Optional: Advanced Intro to SVM, SVM Solvers slides
Aug 26 Nonlinear Learning with Kernels CIML Chapter 9 (section 9.1 and 9.4), Murphy (MLAPP): Chapter 14 (up to section 14.4.3) slides
Unsupervised Learning
Aug 31 Data Clustering, K-means and Kernel K-means Bishop (PRML): Section 9.1. Optional reading: Data clustering: 50 years beyond k-means HW 1 Due slides
Sept 2 Linear Dimensionality Reduction: Principal Component Analysis Bishop (PRML): Section 12.1. Optional reading: PCA tutorial paper slides
Sept 7 PCA (Wrap-up) and Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction via Kernel PCA Optional reading: Kernel PCA slides
Sept 21 Matrix Factorization and Matrix Completion Optional Reading: Matrix Factorization for Recommender Systems, Scalable MF slides
Sept 23 Introduction to Generative Models slides
Sept 26 Generative Models for Clustering: GMM and Intro to EM Bishop (PRML): Section 9.2 and 9.3 (up to 9.3.2) slides (notes)
Sept 28 Expectation Maximization and Generative Models for Dim. Reduction Bishop (PRML): Section 9.3 (up to 9.3.2) and 9.4 slides
Oct 5 Generative Models for Dim. Reduction: Probabilistic PCA and Factor Analysis Bishop (PRML): Section 12.2 (up to 12.2.2). Optional reading: Mixtures of PPCA HW 2 Due slides
Assorted Topics
Oct 19 Practical Issues: Model/Feature Selection, Evaluating and Debugging ML Algorithms On Evaluation and Model Selection slides
Oct 24 Introduction to Learning Theory Optional (but recommended) Mitchell ML Chapter 7 (sections 7.1-7.3.1, section 7.4 (up to 7.4.2)) slides
Oct 26 Ensemble Methods: Bagging and Boosting CIML Chapter 11, Optional: Brief Intro to Boosting, Explaining AdaBoost slides
Oct 28 Semi-supervised Learning Reading: Brief SSL Intro, Optional: A (somewhat old but recommended) survey on SSL slides
Nov 2 Deep Learning (1): Feedforward Neural Nets and CNN Optional Readings: Feedforward Neural Networks, Convolutional Neural Nets HW 3 Due slides
Nov 4 Deep Learning (2): Models for Sequence Data (RNN and LSTM) and Autoencoders Optional Readings: RNN and LSTM, Understanding LSTMs, RNN and LSTM Review slides
Nov 5 Learning from Imbalanced Data slides
Nov 9 Online Learning (Adversarial Model and Experts) Optional Reading: Foundations of ML (Chapter 7) slides
Nov 11 Survey of Other Topics and Conclusions slides

Useful Links

- Machine Learning Summer Schools
- Scikit-Learn: Machine Learning in Python
- Awesome Machine Learning (a comprehensive list of various Machine Learning libraries and softwares)

Course Policies

Anti-cheating policy