Welcome to the Spring 2014 homepage for CMPSCI 240: Reasoning About Uncertainty.

  • Instructor:
    • Andrew McGregor. Email: mcgregor at cs.
    • Office hours: 1:30-2:30 Wednesday or by appointment. My office is 334 in the computer science department.

  • TA:
    • Vineet Kumar. Email: vineet at cs. CT Siddharth. Email: siddct@cs.umass.edu
    • Office hours: 11-12 Monday (Sid, LGRT 220), 2-3 Thursday (Vineet, LGRT 220) and by appointment.

  • Textbook: The textbooks will be
  • Grade Brakedown:
    • Participation (10%): Discussion section activities and in-class quizzes.
    • Homework (20%): Weekly multiple-choice quiz (in Moodle) and six sets of written homework problems.
    • Midterm 1 (15%): Focuses on lectures 1-7.
    • Midterm 2 (15%): Focuses on lectures 8-14.
    • Midterm 3 (15%): Focuses on lectures 15-20.
    • Final (25%): Covers all lectures.
  • Homeworks, Exams, Material:
  • Schedule and Slides: Here's an approximate schedule for the course. Note that this'll be updated as we go along depending on our progress and, hopefully, we'll get to squeeze in a couple of extra topcs. I'll add slides after each class (some links will be dead until the slides are added).

    Date Topic Reading and Background
    Lec 1 21 Jan Preliminaries, Sets, Probability 1-9 [BT]
    Lec 2 23 Jan Basic properties of probability 10-22 [BT]
    Lec 3 28 Jan Conditional probability 22-28 [BT]
    Disc 1 29 Jan Discussion Simpson's Paradox
    Lec 4 30 Jan Sequential experiments 28-34 [BT]
    Lec 5 4 Feb The total probability theorem and Bayes rule 34-41 [BT]
    - 5 Feb [Snow Day]
    Lec 6 6 Feb Independent trials and Basic Counting 42-51 [BT]
    Lec 7 11 Feb More Advanced Counting 42-51 [BT]
    Disc 2 12 Feb Discussion: Monty Hall Monty Hall Problem
    - 13 Feb [Snow Day]
    - 18 Feb [Monday Schedule]
    Disc 3 19 Feb Discussion: Exam Review First Revision Handout
    Lec 8 20 Feb Random variables and binomial distribution pp.72-81 [BT]
    Lec 9 25 Feb Geometric and Poisson Randon Variables pp. 72-81 [BT]
    Disc 4 26 Feb Discussion:
    Lec 10 27 Feb Functions of Random Variables pp. 81-92 [BT]
    Lec 11 4 Mar Variance and Tail Bounds pp. 264-270 [BT]
    Disc 5 5 Mar Discussion:
    Lec 12 6 Mar Chebyshev Bound pp. 264-270 [BT], Chebyshev Video
    Lec 13 11 Mar Multiple Random Variables pp. 92-115 [BT]
    Disc 6 12 Mar Discussion: Exam Review Second Revision Handout
    Lec 14 13 Mar Covariance, Correlation and Causation pp. 217-221 [BT]
    Lec 15 25 Mar Coupon Collecting Coupon Collecting
    Disc 7 26 Mar Discussion:
    Lec 16 27 Mar Balls and Bins Birthday Problem
    Lec 17 1 Apr Spam Filtering and Naive Bayes Classification
    Disc 8 2 Apr Discussion:
    Lec 18 3 Apr Bayesian Networks
    Lec 19 8 Apr Bayesian Networks
    Disc 9 9 Apr Discussion:
    Lec 20 10 Apr Markov Chains pp. 340-362 [BT]
    Lec 21 15 Apr Markov Chains pp. 340-362 [BT]
    Disc 10 16 Apr Discussion: Exam Review Third Revision Handout
    Lec 22 17 Apr Game Theory
    Lec 23 22 Apr More Game Theory
    - 23 Apr [Monday Schedule]
    Lec 24 24 Apr Information Theory
    Lec 25 29 Apr Information Theory
    Disc 12 30 Apr Discussion: Exam Review Fourth Revision Handout