CSI5387
Concept Learning Systems/Machine Learning 
Instructor 
Nathalie Japkowicz 
Office: STE 5-029
Phone: 562-5800 ext. 6693 
E-mail: nat@site.uottawa.ca 
Meeting Times and Locations
Office Hours and Locations 
Overview 
Machine Learning is the area of Artificial Intelligence concerned with
the problem of building computer programs that automatically improve with
experience. The intent of this course is to present a broad introduction to the
principles and paradigms underlying machine learning, including presentations
of its main approaches, discussions of its major theoretical issues, and
overviews of its most important research themes. 
Course Format
The course will consist of a mixture of regular lectures and student
presentations. The regular lectures will cover descriptions and discussions of
the major approaches to Machine Learning as well as of its major theoretical
issues. The student presentations will focus on the most important themes we
survey. These themes will mostly be approached through recent research articles
from the Machine Learning literature. 
Evaluation 
Students will be evaluated on short written commentaries and oral
presentations of research papers (20%), on a few homework assignments (30%),
and on a final class project of the student's choice (50%). For the class
project, students can propose their own topic or choose from a list of
suggested topics which will be made available at the beginning of the term.
Project proposals will be due in mid-semester. Group discussions are highly
encouraged for the research paper commentaries and students will be allowed to
submit their reviews in teams of 3 or 4. However, homework and projects must
be submitted individually. 
Pre-Requisites 
Students should have reasonable exposure to Artificial Intelligence and
some programming experience in a high level language. 
Required Textbooks 
Additional References .
Other 
Research papers will be available from Conference Proceedings or
Journals available from the Web. 
(Links appear in the Syllabus table below, in the 
List of Major Approaches
Surveyed 
List of Theoretical Issues
Considered
List of Major Themes
Surveyed 
·        
Active
Learning
·        
Anomaly
Detection
·        
Graph
Mining
·        
Evaluation
·        
Discovery/Mining
·        
Miscellaneous
Homework Related material: 
· List
of Themes/Papers for this year 
· Assignment
1 (due date: February 7, 2012; extended to February 14, 2012)
· Assignment
2 (due date: March 6, 2012)
· Assignment
3 (due date: March 27, 2012)
Course Support: 
· Suggested
Outline for Paper Commentaries 
· Guidelines
for the Final Project Report 
· 
R Code from the Japkowicz and Shah Evaluation Book
Machine Learning Ressources on the Web: 
· David Aha's Machine Learning Resource Page 
· WEKA 
· Free Book:
Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, David MacKay 
Syllabus:
| Week | Topics | Readings | 
| Week 1:
   Jan 9 | Introduction 1: Organizational Meeting  Introduction 2: Overview of Machine Learning  | Texts:  | 
| Week 2:
   Jan 16 | Approach:
  Versions Space Learning Additional Slides on: inductive
  learning theory, version spaces, decision trees and neural nets  Approach: Decision Tree Learning  | Texts:  Witten
  & Frank, Sections 4.3 & 6.1  | 
| Week 3:
   Jan 23 | Theoretical Issue: Experimental Evaluation of
  Learning Algorithms I | Texts:  Japkowicz
  & Shah, Chapters 3, 4 Witten
  & Frank, pp. 223-235 | 
| Week 4:
   Jan 30  | Theoretical Issue: Experimental Evaluation of
  Learning Algorithms II  | Text: Japkowicz & Shah, Chapters
  5, 6 Theme
  Readings:  
 | 
| Week 5:
   Feb 6 Homework 1 DUE on Tuesday  | Approach: Bayesian Learning  
 | Texts: Witten & Frank, Sections
  4.2 and 6.7   | 
| Week 6:
   Feb 13  | Approach: Instance-Based Learning  | Texts: Witten & Frank, Sections 4.7 and 6.4 Theme Readings:  
 | 
| Week 7 Feb 20 | STUDY BREAK | STUDY BREAK | 
| Week 8:
   Feb 27 | Approach: Rule Learning/Association
  Mining | Texts: Witten & Frank, Sections
  4.4 and 6.2 Theme
  Readings:  
 | 
| Week 9:
   March 5 | Approach: Support Vector Machines Theme: Graph Mining  | Texts: Witten & Frank, Sections
  4.6 and 6.3 Theme Readings:  
 | 
| Week
  10:  Mar 12 | Approach: Classifier Combination | Texts: Witten & Frank, Section 7.5 Theme Readings:  
 | 
| Week
  11: Mar 19 | Theoretical
  Issue: Computational Learning Theory  Approach: Unsupervised Learning  | Texts: See Tom Mitchell’s book Texts: Witten & Frank, Sections 4.8 and 6.6. Theme Readingss:  
 ·        
  Semi-Supervised Feature
  Importance Evaluation with Ensemble Learning, Barkia
  Hasna, Elghazel Haytham, and Aussem
  Alex, ICDM’11 | 
| Week
  12:  Mar 26  | Approach: Genetic Algorithms  Theme: TBA | Texts: See Tom Mitchell’s book  Theme Readings: TBA  | 
| Week
  13:  Apr 2 | 
 | 
 |