Machine learning lecture 1  (Page 5/17)

As far as this class, I've also written, and I guess I've also revised every year a set of fairly detailed lecture notes that cover the technical content of this class. And so if you visit the course homepage, you'll also find the detailed lecture notes that go over in detail all the math and equations and so on that I'll be doing in class.

There's also a newsgroup, su.class.cs229, also written on the handout. This is a newsgroup that's sort of a forum for people in the class to get to know each other and have whatever discussions you want to have amongst yourselves. So the class newsgroup will not be monitored by the TAs and me. But this is a place for you to form study groups or find project partners or discuss homework problems and so on, and it's not monitored by the TAs and me. So feel free to talk trash about this class there.

If you want to contact the teaching staff, please use the email address written down here, cs229-qa@cs.stanford.edu. This goes to an account that's read by all the TAs and me. So rather than sending us email individually, if you send email to this account, it will actually let us get back to you maximally quickly with answers to your questions.

If you're asking questions about homework problems, please say in the subject line which assignment and which question the email refers to, since that will also help us to route your question to the appropriate TA or to me appropriately and get the response back to you quickly.

Let's see. Skipping ahead — let's see — for homework, one midterm, one open and term project. Notice on the honor code. So one thing that I think will help you to succeed and do well in this class and even help you to enjoy this class more is if you form a study group.

So start looking around where you're sitting now or at the end of class today, mingle a little bit and get to know your classmates. I strongly encourage you to form study groups and sort of have a group of people to study with and have a group of your fellow students to talk over these concepts with. You can also post on the class newsgroup if you want to use that to try to form a study group.

But some of the problems sets in this class are reasonably difficult. People that have taken the class before may tell you they were very difficult. And just I bet it would be more fun for you, and you'd probably have a better learning experience if you form a study group of people to work with. So I definitely encourage you to do that.

And just to say a word on the honor code, which is I definitely encourage you to form a study group and work together, discuss homework problems together. But if you discuss homework problems with other students, then I'll ask you to sort of go home and write down your own solutions independently without referring to notes that were taken in any of your joint study sessions.

So in other words, when you turn in a homework problem, what you turn in should be something that was reconstructed independently by yourself and without referring to notes that you took during your study sessions with other people, okay? And obviously, showing your solutions to others or copying other solutions directly is right out.