ECE 411 Introduction to Machine Learning

Fall 2024 Course Syllabus

Time & Location: Lecture: MW 4:30–5:45 pm, 1229 EB2. Discussion: F 12:50–1:40 pm, 1229 EB2.

Instructor: Dr. Chau-Wai Wong

Teaching Assistants: Ms. Chanae Ottley

Office Hours Scheduled (Zoom link can be found here. If none of the timeslots work for you, you may request an office hour session via a Piazza private message.)

Day	Time	Place	Person
Mondays	11 am-12 noon	Open space outside 2116 EB2	Ottley
Mon & Wed	After lectures	Classroom or office	Wong
Thursdays	9:30-10 am	Zoom	Wong
Sundays	2-2:30 pm	Zoom	Wong

Course Forum: Piazza

Homework Submission: Gradescope

Course Description: Deep learning progressed remarkably over the past decade and virtually every single industry has seen the encouraging potential brought by the application of deep learning. This course introduces fundamental concepts and algorithms in machine learning that are vital for understanding state-of-the-art and cutting-edge development in deep learning. This course exposes students to real-world applications via well-guided homework programming problems and a term project.

Prerequisites: (i) ST 300-level or above, and (ii) ECE301/CSC316/ISE361/MA341. Email the instructor your transcript to discuss if the second prerequisite can be waived.

Course Structure: Course Structure: The course consists of two 75-min lectures and one 50-min discussion section per week. A teaching assistant will lead the discussion section, covering practice problems and answering questions from students. There will be weekly homework assignments (30%) that contain both written problems and programming problems, two midterm exams (20%×2), and one term project (30%). Programming will be in Python, R, or Matlab. Students are expected to be able to write computer programs and have mathematical maturity in probability theory (e.g., have taken a 300-level statistics course) before taking the course. A linear algebra course such as MA305/405 is recommended while taking the course.

Textbooks:

G. James, D. Witten, T. Hastie, and R. Tibshirani, Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in R (ISLR), 1st edition, Springer, 2013. [Official PDF]
G. James, D. Witten, T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani, and J. Taylor, Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in Python (ISLP), Springer, 2023. [Official PDF]
T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani, and J. Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning, (12th Printing, 2017), 2nd Ed., Springer. [Online]
I. Goodfellow, Y. Bengio, and A. Courville, Deep Learning, MIT Press, 2016. [Online]

Reference Books:

S. H. Chan, Introduction to Probability for Data Science, 2021. [Online]
M. P. Deisenroth, A. A. Faisal, and C. S. Ong, Mathematics for Machine Learning, 2020. [Online]
J. L. Devore, Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences, Ed. 9.
A. Leon-Garcia, Probability, Statistics, and Random Processes for Electrical Engineering, Ed. 3, 2008.
C. E. McCulloch and S. R. Searle, Generalized, Linear, and Mixed Models, Wiley & Sons, 2001.
K. P. Murphy, Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective, 2012. [Online via Course Reserves]
R. O. Duda, P. E. Hart, and D. G. Stork, Pattern Classification, 2nd Ed., Wiley, 2001.
E. Alpaydin, Introduction to Machine Learning, 2nd Ed., MIT Press, 2009.

Topics: Classical topics: regression, classification, support vector machines, and cross-validation.
Cutting-edge topics: convolutional neural networks (CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), transformers (e.g., BERT and GPT), and diffusion models.

Class #	Date	Topic	Lecture notes	Readings	HW Assignment
1	8/19	Introduction	Slide deck 1	ISLR Ch1–2; ML Supp	HW1 (Due 8/26)
2	8/21	Machine learning overview		ISLR Ch1–2
3	8/26	Supervised learning		ISLR Ch1–2	HW2 (due 9/9)
4	8/28	Linear regression, Matrix-vector form Least squares; Vector space		Scheffe Ch1 Scheffe App 1
Deep Learning
	9/2	Labor Day
5	9/4	Geometric interpretation; Modern ML applications - CNN	Slide deck 2	DL Ch6, Ch9	HW3 (due 9/19)
6	9/9	Neural network training: Backpropagation		DL Ch8, Ch11
7	9/11	Neural network training: Backpropagation (cont'd)			HW4 (due 9/25)
8	9/16	Modern ML applications - LSTM, Transformers (BERT & GPT)		DL Ch10
9	9/18	Modern ML applications - Transformers (BERT & GPT) (cont'd)
10	9/23	Modern ML applications - Diffusion models		DDPM, SDXL, DALL·E 3
Linear Statistical Models: Regression
11	9/25	Regression function, Conditional expectation	HT Ch2	ISLR Ch2; Devore 3.3, 4.2, 2.4; Leon 3.2, 5.7
	9/30	Exam 1
12	10/2	Probability theory review, Regression function (cont'd)		ISLR Ch2; Devore CH6
13	10/7	Curse of dimensionality, Model accuracy, Bias-variance trade-off	HT Ch2	ISLR Ch2	HW5 (due 10/21)
Classification
14	10/9	Logistic regression	HT Ch4	ISLR 4.1–3, ESL 4.4
	10/14	Fall Break
15	10/16	MLE & Invariance principle; Link function for GLM		Devore 6.2; McCulloch 5.1–4	HW6 (due 10/30) Project
16	10/21	Linear discriminant analysis		ISLR 4.4, Leon 6.3.1, 6.4 ISLR 4.4.3, Murphy 5.7.2.1
17	10/23	Error types, ROC, AUC, EER		ESL 6.6.3, Murphy 3.5; ISLR 4.5; Devore 6.2	HW7 (due 11/6)
Other Topics
18	10/28	Naive Bayes, Logistic vs. LDA; Cross-validation	HT Ch5	ISLR 5.1	Lab
19	10/30	Talks & panel; Cross-validation (cont'd)	HT Ch5	ISLR 5.1	HW8 (due 11/21)
20	11/4	Cross-validation (cont'd); Bootstrap	HT Ch5	ISLR 5.2
21	11/6	Regularization	HT Ch6	ISLR 6.2
22	11/11	Support vector machine (SVM)	HT Ch9	ISLR Ch9
23	11/13	Unsupervised learning: Clustering; PCA	HT Ch10	ISLR 10.2, 10.3
	11/18	Exam 2
24	11/20	LLM "secret sauce"; Invited ML career talk (last 15 mins)
25	11/25	...
	11/27	Thanksgiving Holiday
26	12/2	...

ECE 411 Introduction to Machine Learning (Fall 2024). [F'23] [F'22] [F'21] [F'19]