Syllabus

Overview

Goals

At the end of CS 361, you will be able to:

  • Visualize and summarize data and reason about outliers and relationships
  • Apply the principles of probability to analyze and simulate random events
  • Use inference to fit statistical models to data and evaluate how good the fit is
  • Apply machine learning tools to dimensionality reduction, classification, clustering, regression and hidden Markov model problems

Throughout the course, we emphasize mathematical principles, critical thinking and dealing with real data.

Prerequisites

  • Calculus. You should know how to find maxima/minima and the area under a curve. Official prerequisite: Math 220 or Math 221.
  • Linear algebra. By the ninth week of semester, you should know how to diagonalize matrices (i.e. find eigenvalues and eigenvectors). Official corequisite: Math 225 (or Math 415), but these courses do not cover diagonalization until the last few weeks of semester, so we highly recommend that you watch this visual introduction to linear algebra from 3Blue1Brown ahead of time.

Textbook

David Forsyth's textbook was written specifically for this course and is available for download for free within the University network.

Communication

We will post important announcements on the home page, so you should monitor it regularly. You can ask questions on the CS 361 Piazza publicly, so that you can reach the entire course staff and allow your classmates to participate in the discussion. If you have a question about your grades or some other personal matter, you may post privately to the course staff. For non-technical interpersonal issues, please contact the Graduate Assistant privately. In addition, do not post answers of any kind publicly on Piazza. Finally please defer complex questions about the course assignment to your discussion session or office hours because such sessions are more suitable for that purpose.

Attendance

We think commitment is necessary for student learning and character building, therefore we expect you to attend all lectures and discussions. Attendance will be tracked accordingly.

If illness or personal crisis (e.g. car accident, required court appearance, death of a close relative) prevents you from attending an exam, you must provide the course instructor with an official excuse letter from the Dean on Duty within two weeks of the exam date and no later than reading day. If you have an exam conflict with an official university activity (e.g. varsity athletics, band concert), you must provide the course instructor with an official letter from the designated university official at least one week before the exam date.

Course work

Participation score

Participation will account for 2% of the final score of points. Full participation means actively using i-Clicker and more than 80% of required attendances to lectures and discussion groups (starting from the 2nd lecture week). Since participation is required, this score will not be given if the participation is not full.

Grading

You will submit homework through Gradescope and we will return homework and exam grades to you also through Gradescope. As soon as grades are posted, you will be notified immediately so that you can log in and see your feedback. You may also submit regrade requests within one week of grades posting. Your Gradescope login is your university email, and your password can be changed here. The same link can be used if you need to set your password for the first time.

Category Points Notes
Participation 20
Homework 400 50 points each; lowest two scores automatically dropped
Project 100
Midterms 300 150 points each
Final exam 200

The final score of points is Participation + 98% sum of other points. Letter grade cutoffs will be at least as generous as the standard ones shown below.

A+ A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- D+ D D-
970 930 900 870 830 800 770 730 700 670 630 600
Homework and project

There will be 10 homework assignments, consisting of problems, proofs and/or R programming tasks. There will also be a project which will be a programming assignment involving concepts from several chapters.

The homework and project are individual assignments. You may verbally discuss your approach with fellow students, but neither your write-up nor your code. By submitting your assignment, you are certifying that the homework/project is your own independent work.

Submission instructions. Each of your homework/project submissions must be typed and submitted as a single PDF file on Gradescope (self-enrollment code is M3DWYE) unless we give you other instructions. In the Gradescope interface, you must properly mark up the locations of each of your answers so that the graders can find them. No handwritten/scanned solutions will be accepted.

Late policy. The homework/project will be due on Mondays at 11:59pm. If you submit by the corresponding Tuesday at 11:59pm, we will deduct 20% (that is, 10 points for a homework or 20 points for the project). If you submit your assignment by the corresponding Wednesday at 11:59pm, we will deduct an additional 20%. No submissions will be accepted after Wednesday 11:59pm. All lateness deductions will be made at the end of semester.

Midterms and final exam

There will be two in-class written midterms and a written final exam, consisting of problems and/or proofs similar to those in the homework.

  • Midterm 1 (75 minutes) will cover chapters 1 to 5.
  • Midterm 2 (75 minutes) will cover chapters 6 to 10 except 8.
  • The final exam (2 hours) will cover chapters 1 to 14 except 8.

You may bring one 8.5x11-inch page (both sides) of hand-written notes to the midterms and final exam. No calculators or other electronic devices are allowed.

Academic integrity

We encourage working together and discussing about the course materials. Regarding homework, we expect you to do your own work in this course - copying solution from someone else is unacceptable. After an exam has been returned, we give students some days in which to resubmit for regrading if they feel that there is a problem with the grading on their exam. If you ask for regrading, do not write anything at all on the exam booklet. Please write a note on a separate sheet of paper or email the course instructors. We expect you to do your own work in this course. We expect you to understand and abide by Article 1 Part 4 of the Student Code, the Students' quick reference guide to academic integrity and the CS department honor code.

Safety

The university values your safety. Please read this document or watch this video.

Accommodations

To obtain disability-related academic adjustments or auxiliary aids, students with disabilities must contact the course instructor and the Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) as soon as possible. To contact DRES, you may visit 1207 S. Oak St., Champaign, call 217-333-4603, e-mail disability@illinois.edu or go to the DRES website.

Other personal situations

Please keep your instructor aware of any situation that may hinder you learning and/or wellness in this course.

Survey

Please take this survey and confirm at the end you have read through the syllabus.