Tentative Course Schedule

HTF = Elements of Statistical Machine Learning, by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman

--Date-- TopicReadingPresenterWhat's due
Jan 8 Introduction
Ch 1


Supervised learning
Jan 10
Supervised learning and linear regression
Ch 2.6,2.1-2.3

Jan 15
Linear regression and k-means Ch 2.1-2.5
Form project groups and email devika@rice.edu
Jan 17 Locally weighted regression
Ch 2.8

Jan 22 Additive models and maximum likelihood estimation Ch

Jan 24 Bias/variance of estimators, active regression, WEKA examples
Ch 3.1-3.2 HTF

Jan 29 Non parametric techniques: nearest neighbor, WEKA examples Ch 3.3 HTF

Jan 31 Classification: generative and discriminative models, LDA and QDA Ch 2.8.2, 6.3 HTF

Feb 5 Logistic regression, gradient ascent, backprop, WEKA examples Ch 3.3-3.5 HTF
Proposal due (project page URL due)
Feb 7 Support vector machines and kernel techniques Ch 4.1,4,2,4.4 HTF

Feb 12 Support vector machines and kernel techniques Ch 4.3 HTF

Prog report 1 due (project page URL due)
Feb 14 Naive bayes, text classification, feature selection, WEKA examples Ch 4.5 HTF

Feb 19 Bayesian network models: parameter learning Ch 5.1-5.3 HTF

Feb 21 Bayesian network models: structure learning, intro to BDAGL Ch 5.4-5.6 HTF

Feb 26 Model selection Ch 5.8-5.9

Feb 28 Ensemble methods: bagging and boosting Ch 12.1,12.2,12.3.1-12.3.4 HTF


Mar 4 Spring break
Prog report 3 due (project page URL due)
Mar 6 Spring Break


Unsupervised learning
Mar 11 Clustering and k-means


Mar 13 Expectation maximization and mixtures of Gaussians Ch 6.1-6.4 HTF
Prog report 2 due (project page URL due)
Mar 18 Factor analysis: PCA, MDS Ch 6.4-6.79 HTF


Mar 20 ICA and Isomap Ch 6.8-6.9


Sequential learning
Mar 25 Learning Hidden Markov models and dynamic Bayesian networks Ch 7, HTF


Mar 27 Markov decision processes, value and policy iteration, LQR Ch 8, HTF
Prog report 4 due (project page URL due)
Apr 1 Q learning, value function approximation


Apr 3 Spring Recess Policy learning
Apr 8 Student presentations of papers Ch 10, HTF


Apr 10 Student presentations of papers Ch 10, HTF


Apr 12 Student presentations of papers Ch 15, HTF


Apr 17 Final project presentations Ch 10, HTF


Apr 21 Final project presentations Ch 10, HTF

Draft final report due (project page URL)