The following schedule is tentative and subject to change.

Date Topic Readings Assignments & Project
Aug 25 Introduction & Course Overview

Aug 27 Background & Basics (Probability) PDM Chapter 4.1-4.3, Appendix Assignment 1 out
Sep 1 Background & Basics (Linear algebra, sampling) PDM Chapter 4.7
Sep 3 Background & Basics (Statistical inference, hypothesis testing) PDM Chapter 4.4-4.6 Assignment 1 due (Sunday Sep 6, 11:59pm)
Sep 8 Elements of Data Mining Algorithm Project guideline out
Sep 10 Data Exploration and Visualization PDM Chapter 3
Sep 15 Predictive Modeling Overview PDM Chapter 6.1-6.3, 10.1-10.2
Sep 17 Predictive Modeling: Naive Bayes PDM Chapter 10.8 Assignment 2 out
Sep 22 Predictive Modeling: Decision trees PDM Chapter 5.2, 10.5
Sep 24 Predictive Modeling: Nearest neighbor PDM Chapter 10.3, 10.6, 11.4 Project proposal due (Sunday Sep 27 11:59pm)
Sep 29 Predictive Modeling: Logistic regression, SVM Assignment 2 due (Wednesday Sep 30, 11:59pm)
Oct 1 Predictive Modeling: Search & Optimization 1 PDM Chapter 8.1-8.3
Oct 6 Predictive Modeling: Search & Optimization 2 Assignment 3 out
Oct 8 Predictive Modeling: Neural network
Oct 13 Predictive Modeling: Evaluation PDM Chapter 10.10
Oct 15 Predictive Modeling: Wrap-up Project midterm report due (Sunday Oct 18 11:59pm)
Oct 20 No class (Online midterm exam)
Oct 22 Predictive Modeling: Ensembles (Bagging & Boosting) Assignment 3 due (Thursday Oct 22 11:59pm)
Oct 27 Predictive Modeling: Ensembles (Boosting & Random forest) Assignment 4 out
Oct 29 Descriptive Modeling Overview
Nov 3 Descriptive Modeling: K-means & Hierarchical clustering PDM Chapter 9.3-9.5
Nov 5 Descriptive Modeling: GMM & Expectation maximization PDM Chapter 9.2, 9.6
Nov 10 Descriptive Modeling: Evaluation Assignment 4 due (Wednesday Nov 11 11:59pm)
Nov 12 Pattern Mining PDM Chapter 13 Assignment 5 out
Nov 17 Interpretability issues of data mining
Nov 19 Fairness issues of data mining
Nov 24 No class (Thanksgiving break)
Nov 26 No class (Thanksgiving break) Assignment 5 due (Monday Nov 30 11:59pm)
Dec 1 Final project presentation (Session 1)
Dec 3 Final project presentation (Session 2) Project final report due (Sunday Dec 6 11:59pm)