Machine Learning (Fall 2025)

General

The programming project is worth 20% of the total grade. It consists of several programming tasks (in Python) on Vocareum. During the second week of the semester, you will receive an invitation to sign up (contact us if you do not receive it). All programming tasks are available starting from the second week as well, so you have almost an entire semester to finish the project. It is up to you whether you prefer to finish a task soon after the corresponding lecture to reinforce your understanding, or to do everything close to the end of the semester so you can focus on the theory first (which is more relevant to the homework and exams).

Vocareum

Vocareum is an online platform that allows you to submit your code easily and then auto-grades it. It is very intuitive and easy to use. Below are some general instructions:

• For each programming task, go to the “work” directory and read “readme.html”, where you will find all instructions to finish that task.

• It is recommended that you download all files from the “work” directory, code locally, and then upload the changes.

• You are allowed to submit as many times as you want, and your grade is determined by your last submission.

• After each submission, you get to see your grade along with the grading report immediately. It might take some time to grade your code though, especially if your code is not efficient enough. As a reference, our solution codes take at most a few minutes for each task.

• Each task comes with some test cases to help you debug, and the grading report also gives you hints on where your bugs might be.

• Solutions code will not be released. Collaborations are not allowed. Using chatbots such as ChatGPT is strictly prohibited.

Due date

12/16, 11:59PM, Pacific Time. Note that this is a strict deadline and no late days are allowed (in fact, not even one “late second”). You should definitely avoid submitting in the last minute to avoid any unexpected issues (e.g., Internet connection lost).