CSC 311 Fall 2022: Introduction to Machine Learning

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Instructors
• Lecture and Tutorial Times
• Prerequisites
• Communication
• COVID-19
• Marking Scheme
• Course Schedule
• Assignments
• Project
• Midterm
• Final Exam
• Academic Integrity
• Remark Request Policy
• Special Considerations Policy
• Student Support Resources
• Recommended Textbooks
• Lecture and Tutorial Materials
• Computing Resources

Overview

Machine learning (ML) is a set of techniques that allow computers to learn from data and experience rather than requiring humans to specify the desired behaviour by hand. ML has become increasingly central both in AI as an academic field and industry. This course provides a broad introduction to some of the most commonly used ML algorithms. It also introduces vital algorithmic principles that will serve as a foundation for more advanced courses, such as CSC412/2506 (Probabilistic Learning and Reasoning) and CSC413/2516 (Neural Networks and Deep Learning).

We start with nearest neighbors, the canonical nonparametric model. We then turn to parametric models: linear regression, logistic regression, softmax regression, and neural networks. We then move on to unsupervised learning, focusing in particular on probabilistic models, but also principal components analysis and K-means. Finally, we cover the basics of reinforcement learning.

Instructors

Rahul Krishnan and Alice Gao

Lecture and Tutorial Times

As of Sep 2022, we plan to have in-person lectures, tutorials, office hours, midterm and final exam in the fall 2022 term. This may, given the COVID-19 situation, be subject to change by the university.

Please attend your assigned lecture section. We strongly encourage students to attend the tutorials although they are optional. Auditing is not allowed this term without express written permission by the instructor.

Prerequisites

• Programming Basics: CSC207/ APS105/ APS106/ ESC180/ CSC180
• Multivariate Calculus: MAT235/ MAT237/ MAT257/ (minimum of 77% in MAT135 and MAT136)/ (minimum of 73% in MAT137)/ (minimum of 67% in MAT157)/ MAT291/ MAT294/ (minimum of 77% in MAT186, MAT187)/ (minimum of 73% in MAT194, MAT195)/ (minimum of 73% in ESC194, ESC195)
• Linear Algebra: MAT221/ MAT223/ MAT240/ MAT185/ MAT188
• Probability: STA237/ STA247/ STA255/ STA257/ STA286/ CHE223/ CME263/ MIE231/ MIE236/ MSE238/ ECE286

Communication

• Piazza: piazza.com/utoronto.ca/fall2022/csc311h1f20229
• Course email address: csc311-2022-09@cs.toronto.edu
• Instructor and TA office hours

• If your question is course related and doesn't give away answers, please post on Piazza publicly so the entire class can benefit from the answer.
• If your question is course related and may give away answers, please post on Piazza privately.
• For remark requests, please submit on MarkUs (for assignments) or contact us via the course email: csc311-2022-09@cs.toronto.edu.
• For special considerations requests, please contact us via the course email: csc311-2022-09@cs.toronto.edu.

Instructor Office Hours

• Rahul Krishnan: Tuesdays 9-10:30am at PT286
• Alice Gao: Wednesdays 4 - 5pm, Fridays 3 - 4pm at BA4240

COVID-19

Although the pandemic has diminished somewhat, all indications are that we are not yet out of the woods. The university no longer requires the use of masks on its premises but encourages it where it is impossible to maintain physical distancing, such as in classrooms and offices.

We strongly recommend that you continue to wear masks during lectures, tutorials, and office hours out of consideration for the health of others. We also strongly encourage you to get vaccine booster shots whenever possible. The instructors plan to wear masks when in close proximity with students, such as when answering questions after lectures or during office hours. However, we may take off our masks when lecturing if we are at a safe distance from students.

Marking Scheme

Course Schedule

Assignments

There will be 3 assignments in this course, posted below. Assignments will be due at 11:59pm on Mondays or Fridays and submitted through MarkUs.

Format: Assignments must be submitted in PDF format through MarkUs. We encourage typesetting using LaTeX, but scans of handwritten solutions are also acceptable as long as they are legible.

Late Submission Policy: Assignments will be accepted up to 3 days late, but 10% will be deducted for each day late, rounded up to the nearest day. No credit will be given for assignments submitted after 3 days.

Collaboration Policy: Collaboration on assignments is not allowed. Each student is responsible for his/her own work. Discussion of assignments should be limited to clarification of the handout itself, and should not involve any sharing of pseudocode or code or simulation results. Violation of this policy is grounds for a semester grade of F, in accordance with university regulations.

Final Project

For your final project, you will attempt to solve a Netflix-Competition-style matrix completion problem. The goal is to predict, in the context of a personalized education platform, whether a student will correctly answer a diagnostic question. In groups of 2-3, you will implement and evaluate several algorithms from the course, and then propose and evaluate an extension to one of these algorithms. This will hopefully be a fun exercise that gives you a feel for what you'd do on a daily basis as a data scientist or machine learning engineer.

[project.pdf]
[starter_code.zip]

Midterm

The midterm will occur in person during tutorial time slots. See the detailed course schedule above. As an aid, you can bring one 8.5' x 11' double-sided sheet of paper to the midterm.

Final Exam

The final exam schedule will become available around the end of November 2022. Check the A&S page for the final exam schedule. Please do not make travel plans before the final exam schedule is released.

TA Office Hours:
Friday, December 9, 2022, 10:00AM-12:00PM (in person in BA2270, CS Help Centre).
Friday, December 9, 2022, 4:00PM-5:30PM (in person in BA2270, CS Help Centre).
Monday, December 12, 2022, 9:00AM-10:00AM (virtual).
Monday, December 12, 2022, 10:00AM-11:00AM (in person in BA2270, CS Help Centre).
Monday, December 12, 2022, 3:00PM-4:00PM (in person in BA2270, CS Help Centre).
Monday, December 12, 2022, 4:00PM-5:00PM (in person in BA2270, CS Help Centre).

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is essential to the pursuit of learning and scholarship in a university, and to ensuring that a degree from the University of Toronto is a strong signal of each student’s individual academic achievement. As a result, the University treats cases of cheating and plagiarism very seriously. The University of Toronto’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters outlines the behaviours that constitute academic dishonesty and the processes for addressing academic offences. Potential offences include, but are not limited to:

• Using someone else’s ideas or words without appropriate acknowledgement;
• Submitting your own work in more than one course without the permission of the instructor;
• Making up sources or facts;
• Obtaining or providing unauthorized assistance on any assignment.

• Using or possessing unauthorized aids;
• Looking at someone else’s answers during an exam or test;
• Misrepresenting your identity; and
• When you knew or ought to have known you were doing it.

• Falsifying institutional documents or grades;
• Falsifying or altering any documentation required by the University, including (but not limited to) doctor’s notes; and
• When you knew or ought to have known you were doing so.

All suspected cases of academic dishonesty will be investigated following procedures outlined in the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters. If students have questions or concerns about what constitutes appropriate academic behaviour or appropriate research and citation methods, they are expected to seek out additional information on academic integrity from their instructors or from other institutional resources.

Remark Request Policy

If you discover a marking error on an assignment or the midterm, you can submit a remark request. We will consider remark requests up to two weeks after we release the marks for an assignment or the midterm.

• For an assignment, please submit the remark request on MarkUs.
• For the midterm, please fill out this remark request form and send it to the course email.

Once the two-week period has passed, we will process all the requests as soon as possible.

Special Considerations Policy

If you are unable to complete an assignment on time or write a test due to extraordinary circumstances beyond your control, please apply for a Special Consideration by filling out this special considerations form and sending it to the course email with your supporting documentation. A special consideration request, particularly if it is not your first request in the course, would not be granted automatically.

Legitimate reasons to apply for a special consideration request:

• Late course enrollment
• Medical conditions (i.e., physical/mental health, hospitalizations, injury, accidents)
• Non-medical conditions (i.e., family/personal emergency)

A heavy course load, multiple assignments/tests scheduling during the same period, and time management issues are not appropriate reasons to grant special considerations. Such accommodations are meant for exceptional circumstances only and not as a means to catch up on term work. If you are having difficulty with stress and time management, please contact your college registrars, who can in turn suggest wellness counselling, academic advising, and/or learning strategists services.

• If you miss the midterm, we will shift the weight of the midterm to the final exam.
• If you miss an assignment deadline, we will shift the weight of the assignment to future assignments or to the final exam.
• If you are registered with accessibility services, your letter of accommodation will allow for an extension of up to 7 full days. However, due to the incremental nature of CS courses, granting such a long extension from the onset may cause you to fall behind and be at a disadvantage. As such, we will start by suggesting an initial 3-day extension. We will grant the 7-day extension later if necessary.

Student Support Resources

• CSC Wellness Resources
• Student Mental Health Resources
• Accessibility Services
• Student Life
• Recognized Study Groups

Recommended Textbooks

Suggested readings are optional; they are resources we recommend to help you understand the course material. All of the textbooks listed below are freely available online.

Bishop: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning.
Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman: The Elements of Statistical Learning.
MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms.
Barber: Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning.
Sutton and Barto: Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction.
Deisenroth, Faisal, and Ong: Math for ML.
Shalev-Shwartz and Ben-David: Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms.
Kevin Murphy: Machine Learning: a Probabilistic Perspective.

Lecture and Tutorial Materials

Computing Resources

1. The easiest option is probably to install everything yourself on your own machine.

   1. If you don't already have python 3, install it.

      We recommend some version of Anaconda (Miniconda, a nice lightweight conda, is probably your best bet). You can also install python directly if you know how.

   2. Optionally, create a virtual environment for this class and step into it. If you have a conda distribution run the following commands:

          conda create --name csc311
          source activate csc311

   3. Use pip to install the required packages

          pip install scipy numpy autograd matplotlib jupyter sklearn

2. All the required packages are already installed on the Teaching Labs machines.