Machine Learning

CS4780 / CS 5780
Fall 2013
Prof. Thorsten Joachims
Cornell University, Department of Computer Science
 

Shortcuts: [Video and Slides] [Piazza] [CMS]

Time and Place

First lecture: August 29, 2013
Last lecture: December 5, 2013

  • Tuesday, 1:25pm - 2:40pm in Kimball B11
  • Thursday, 1:25pm - 2:40pm in Kimball B11

First Prelim Exam: October 17
Second Prelim Exam: November 26
Final Project: December 11 and December 18

Syllabus

Machine learning is concerned with the question of how to make computers learn from experience. The ability to learn is not only central to most aspects of intelligent behavior, but machine learning techniques have become key components of many software systems. For examples, machine learning techniques are used to create spam filters, to analyze customer purchase data, to understand natural language, or to detect fraudulent credit card transactions.

This course will introduce the fundamental set of techniques and algorithms that constitute machine learning as of today, ranging from classification methods like decision trees and support vector machines, over structured models like hidden Markov models, to clustering and matrix factorization methods for recommendation. The course will not only discuss individual algorithms and methods, but also tie principles and approaches together from a theoretical perspective. In particular, the course will cover the following topics:

  • Instance-based Learning : K-Nearest Neighbors, collaborative filtering
  • Decision Trees : TDIDT, attribute selection, pruning and overfitting
  • Linear Rules : Perceptron, logistic regression, linear regression, duality
  • Support Vector Machines : Optimal hyperplane, margin, kernels, stability
  • Generative Models : Naïve Bayes, linear discriminant analysis
  • Hidden Markov Models: probabilistic model, estimation, Viterbi
  • Structured Output Prediction : predicting sequences, rankings, etc.
  • Statistical Learning Theory : PAC learning, VC dimension, generalization error bounds
  • Online Learning : experts, bandits, online mistake bounds
  • Clustering : HAC, k-means, mixture of Gaussians
  • Recommender Systems: Similarity based methods, matrix factorization, embeddings
  • ML Experimentation : Hypothesis tests, cross validation, resampling estimates

The prerequisites for the class are: Programming skills (e.g. CS 2110 or CS 3110), and basic knowledge of linear algebra (e.g. MATH 2940), and probability theory (e.g. CS 2800).

 

Slides and Video

  • 08/28: Introduction [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • What is learning?
    • What is machine learning used for?
    • Overview of course, course policies, and contact info.
  • 09/03: Instance-Based Learning [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Definition of concept learning / binary classification, instance space, target function, training examples.
    • Unweighted k-nearest neighbor (kNN) rule.
    • Weighted kNN.
    • Effect of selecting k.
    • Supervised learning for binary classification, multi-class classification, regression, and stuctured output prediction.
    • kNN for regression and collaborative filtering.
  • 09/05: Decision-Tree Learning [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Hypothesis space, consistency, and version space
    • List-then-eliminate algorithm
    • Classifying with a decision tree
    • Representational power of decision trees
    • TDIDT decision tree learning algorithm
    • Splitting criteria for TDIDT learning
  • 09/10: Prediction and Overfitting [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Training error, test error, prediction error
    • Independently identically distributed (iid) data
    • Overfitting
    • Occam's razor
  • 09/12: Model Selection and Assessment [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Model selection
      Controlling overfitting in decision trees
      Train, validation, test split
      K-fold cross validation
    • Model Assessment
      What is the true error of a classification rule?
  • 09/17: Linear Classifiers and Perceptrons [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Model Assessment
      Is rule h1 more accurate than h2?
      Is learning algorithm A1 more accurate than A2?
    • Linear classification rules
    • Batch Perceptron learning algorithm
  • 09/24: Ensenble Methods: Bagging [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Ensenble methods
    • Bias-variance trade-off
    • Bagging algorithm
  • 09/26: Ensemble Methods: Boosting [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Boosting
    • Adaboost algorithm
    • Margins
  • 10/01: Support Vector Machines: Optimal Hyperplanes and Soft Margin [video] [slides] [slides 6up]
    • Optimal hyperplanes and margins
    • Hard-margin Support Vector Machine
    • Soft-margin Support Vector Machine
    • Primal optimization problems

Staff

We greatly prefer that you use the CS4780/5780 Piazza Forum for questions and discussions.  The forum is monitored by all the TA's and the prof -- you will get the best response time. And all the TA's will know the question you asked and the answers you received.

  • Prof. Thorsten Joachims (homepage)
  • Igor Labutov, [homeworks and solutions]
  • Ian Lenz, TA [late submissions, CMS, and regrades]
  • Tobias Schnabel, TA [office hours, piazza, and video]
  • Karthik Raman, TA [projects]
  • Emma Kilfoyle, TA
  • Brook Du, Consultant
  • Anthony Fu, Consultant
  • Steve Mandl, Consultant
  • Detian Shi, Consultant
  • Ben Shulman, Consultant
  • Darren Voon, Consultant
  • Wenhai Yang, Consultant

 

Assignments and Exams

Homework assignments can be downloaded from CMS. If you need to be added to CMS, please contact Ian Lenz.

All assignments are due at the beginning of class on the due date. Assignments turned in late will be charged a 1 percentage point reduction of the cumulated final homework grade for each period of 24 hours for which the assignment is late. However, every student has a budget of 6 late days (i.e. 24 hour periods after the time the assignment was due) throughout the semester for which there is no late penalty. So, if you have perfect scores of 100 on all 5 homeworks and a total of 8 late days, you final homework score will be 98 (which then accounts for 35% of your course grade). No assignment will be accepted after the solution was made public, which is typically 3-5 days after the time it was due. You can submit late assignments in class or directly to Ian Lenz.

Graded homework assignments and prelims can be picked up in Upson 305 (opening hours Monday - Thursday 12:00pm - 4:00pm, Friday: 12:30pm - 4:00pm). Regrade requests can be submitted within 7 days after the grades have been made available on CMS. Regrade requests have to be submitted in writing and in hardcopy using this form (or similar). They can be submitted in class or to Ian Lenz.
 

Grading

This is a 4-credit course. Grades will be determined based on two written exams, a final project, homework assignments, and class participation.

  • 50%: 2 Prelim Exams
  • 15%: Final Project
  • 25%: Homework (~5 assignments)
  • 5%: Quizzes (in class)
  • 2%: Prereq Exam
  • 3%: Class Participation

To eliminate outlier grades for homeworks and quizzes, the lowest grade is replaced by the second lowest grade when grades are cumulated at the end of the semester.

We always appreciate interesting homework solutions that go beyond the minimum. To reward homework solutions that are particularly nice, we will give you "Bonus Points". Bonus points are collected in a special category on CMS. Bonus points are not real points and are not summed up for the final grade, but they can nudge somebody to a higher grade who is right on the boundary.

All assignment, exam, and final grades (including + and - of that grade) are roughly on the following scale: A=92-100; B=82-88; C=72-78; D=60-68; F= below 60.
 

Reference Material

The main textbooks for the class are:

  • Tom Mitchell, "Machine Learning", McGraw Hill, 1997.
  • CS4780 course packet available at the Cornell Bookstore.

An additional textbook that can serve as an in-depth secondary reference on many topics in this class is:

  • Kevin Murphy, "Machine Learning - a Probabilistic Perspective", MIT Press, 2012. (online via Cornell Library)

The reading in the course packet are taken from the following books. In addition, these are some books for further reading beyond the scope of the course:

  • Cristianini, Shawe-Taylor, "Introduction to Support Vector Machines", Cambridge University Press, 2000. (online via Cornell Library)
  • Schoelkopf, Smola, "Learning with Kernels", MIT Press, 2001. (online)
  • Bishop, "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning", Springer, 2006.
  • Ethem Alpaydin, "Introduction to Machine Learning", MIT Press, 2004.
  • Devroye, Gyoerfi, Lugosi, "A Probabilistic Theory of Pattern Recognition", Springer, 1997.
  • Duda, Hart, Stork, "Pattern Classification", Wiley, 2000.
  • Hastie, Tibshirani, Friedman, "The Elements of Statistical Learning", Springer, 2001.
  • Joachims, "Learning to Classify Text using Support Vector Machines", Kluwer, 2002.
  • Leeds Tutorial on HMMs (online)
  • Manning, Schuetze, "Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing", MIT Press, 1999. (online via Cornell Library)
  • Manning, Raghavan, Schuetze, "Introduction to Information Retrieval", Cambridge, 2008. (online)
  • Vapnik, "Statistical Learning Theory", Wiley, 1998.

Academic Integrity

This course follows the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the student's own work. Violations of the rules (e.g. cheating, copying, non-approved collaborations) will not be tolerated.

We run automatic cheating detection to detect violations of the collaboration rules.