Week 2, 28 Sep – 2 Oct
Welcome to week 2!
The written materials and the videos are now up. (You may need to refresh a page to see videos. We will try to release the notes and videos earlier in future weeks.)
The material this week is important: it is essential you know how to use training/validation/test sets correctly and what they are for. You need to know how to put “error bars” on your results — but also which error bar you want (if any). Finally, we construct multivariate Gaussians from scratch, because these are needed in many of the models and methods in the remainder of the course. Unfortunately covering all these fundamentals doesn’t leave much time to talk about learning and data this week. However, we will talk about learning methods again next week, and this week’s question sheet does have some data in it.
Here is what you need to do in Week 2:
Any catch-up: Make sure you have done last week’s activities. Although don’t get stuck on any “further reading” or optional parts, because you need to get on with this week. If there are any threads on hypothesis that didn’t get resolved (allow 48 hrs), email Arno and Iain.
Lecture notes: Work through the Week 2 notes, answering all the questions. (These are important, but do not affect your grade.)
Question sheet: Do the week 2 question sheet. Question sheets from next week will be assessed. This one is for practice, and to set up some data for next week’s sheet.
Virtual Meet-ups: You could meet up with other students in the class on MS Teams on Tuesday 29 Sep, Wednesday 30 Sep, and/or Friday 2 October at 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM UK time (BST, UTC+1). One of Arno or Iain will be there at each of the Tuesday and Friday times. (We will email you during the week about setting up discussion groups for next week.)
More information about MS Teams in last week’s meet-up instructions If you haven’t been added to the Team, it’s probably because you haven’t filled out the welcome form from last week.
There is no official deadline this week, and what you submit doesn’t contribute towards your grade. However, we recommend that you aim to finish the questions (in the notes and question sheet) by the end of Thursday (polishing anything if necessary until 4pm UK time on Friday), to get into a routine for future weeks.