You only need to do questions 1 and 2 in homework five, and You do not need to do question 3 this week. See the Teams thread. Of the three questions in homework 5, questions 1 and 2 are about Bayes Theorem, which are designed to aid in studying for the exam. We will be moving Q3 to the following homework.

Midterm Preparation

The midterm exam will consist of ten questions, and students will have the entire three hours and twenty minutes to complete it. All formulas will be provided; no cheatsheets, computers, or electronic devices are allowed. (You can bring your phones, just don’t use them during the exam.) We will provide scratch paper. The breakdown of these questions are:

  • Map Reduce Questions (30%)
  • Principle Component Analysis (10%)
  • Maximum Likelihood Questions (10%)
  • Unsupervised Machine Learning Questions (10%)
  • Multi-Part Frequent Itemsets and Association Rules Questions (20%)
  • Fresh Content Bayesian Rules Questions (20%)

The midterm is close book without any notes. I will provide some information on the board so that memorization of formulas is unnecessary. Among the information that I anticipate as helpful, here are some that might help:

  • Commonly used map-reduce functions: map, reduceByKey, and filter
  • Some helpful derivatives and math properties: log, exponent, product
  • Probabilistic rules: conditional probability, total probability, and Bayes rule

I would suggest that you practice these so that you needn’t look up at the board so frequently.

Midterm Review Slides

Here are some practice problems that should help you prepare:

Project Proposals Due 3/21

Project proposals are now due 3/21 after the holiday. Please organize your team and review the proposal site.