COMS 4771 Fall 2023 Syllabus

Description

COMS 4771 is a graduate-level introduction to machine learning. The course covers basic statistical principles of supervised machine learning, as well as some common algorithmic paradigms.

Course information

See course website https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~djhsu/coms4771-f23/ for up-to-date information and announcements.

Learning goals

Prerequisites

There are several prerequisites for this course.

A more detailed list of topics is available here.

Review notes for some of the prerequisites are available here.

Some online resources for course prerequisites are as follows.

Topics

The tentative list of topics is as follows.

A brief overview of the course topics is available here.

Requirements

Students are expected to attend lectures, complete required reading assignments, complete homework assignments, and take in-class exams.

Readings

Lectures will be mostly self-contained; required reading assignments will be posted alongside the lecture schedule. Pointers to optional reading from (some of) the following texts will also be given.

All of these texts are available online, possibly through Columbia University Libraries.

Assessment

The overall course grade is comprised of the following.

There are no make-up assignments/exams available.

Overall course grades will be curved.

Columbia video network

CVN students may be subject to other policies related to the video network format; please contact CVN administration for details.

Disability services

If you require accommodations or support services from Disability Services, please make necessary arrangements in accordance with their policies within the first two weeks of the semester.

Academic rules of conduct

You are expected to adhere to the Academic Honesty policy of the Computer Science Department, as well as the following course-specific policies.

Policies on plagiarism

Any work you submit must be written completely in your own words.

Policies on collaboration

Homework assignments must be completed individually or in groups of two or three. All students must abide by the following rules regarding collaboration.

  • If you work in a group, all members of the group must contribute to the solution of each problem.
  • You may not look at or take another student’s/group’s homework write-up/solutions/code (whether partial or complete).
  • You may not show or give your homework write-up/solutions/code (whether partial or complete) to another student/group.
  • Discussions between different homework groups must not go as far as one group telling the other group how to solve a problem.

Exams must be completed individually. Collaboration or discussion between students on exams is NOT PERMITTED.

Policies on the use of outside references and resources on homework assignments

Outside reference materials and resources (i.e., texts and sources beyond the assigned reading materials for the course) may be used on homework under the following rules.

  • Any reference or resource used must be acknowledged and cited in the write-up.
  • Explicitly searching or querying the internet/large language models/“AIs”/etc. for answers or hints on homework assignments is not permitted.
  • If you inadvertently come across a solution to (or substantial hint about) a problem, you must:
    • acknowledge this source and document the circumstance in your homework write-up;
    • produce a solution without looking at the source; and
    • as always, write your solution in your own words.
  • If you have already seen one of the homework problems before (e.g., in a different course), please re-solve the problem without referring to any previous solutions.
    • In your write-up, please also indicate that you had seen the problem before. (You won’t lose any credit for this; it would just be helpful for us to know about this fact.)

Outside references and sources CANNOT be used on exams.

You are welcome to use resources found in the library, on the internet, embedded in large language models, etc., to help you learn about the course topics. But please note that these resources may contain (often very subtle) inaccuracies, and the course staff may not be able to help you discern whether a particular resource is correct or not. Also, these resources may not be used on exams.

Consequences of policy violations

Violation of any portion of these policies will result in a penalty to be assessed at the instructor’s discretion (e.g., a zero grade for the assignment in question, a failing letter grade for the course), even for a first offense.

Getting help

You are encouraged to use office hours and message board to discuss and ask questions about course material and reading assignments, and to ask for high-level clarification on and possible approaches to homework problems. If you need to ask a detailed question specific to your solution, please do so on the message board and mark the post as “private” so only the instructors can see it.

Questions, of course, are also welcome during lecture. If something is not clear to you during lecture, there is a chance it may also not be clear to other students. So please raise your hand to ask for clarification during lecture. Some questions may need to be handled “off-line”; we’ll do our best to handle these questions in office hours or on message board.