Welcome to the Spring 2015 homepage for CMPSCI 240: Reasoning About Uncertainty.
- Instructor:
- Andrew McGregor (Email: mcgregor at cs).
- Office hours: 1:30-2:30 Friday or by appointment. My office is 334 in the computer science department.
- TA:
- Shaylyn Adams (Email: sadams at cs). Katerina Marazopoulou (Email: kmarazo at cs).
- Office hours: 3-4 Monday (Shaylyn, LGRT 220), 3:00-4:00 Wednesday (Katerina, LGRT 220) and by appointment.
- Textbook:
The textbooks will be
- Required: Introduction to Probability, 2nd Edition by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and John N. Tsitsiklis.
- Useful: Introduction to Probability by Charles M. Grinstead and J. Laurie Snell. See here for solution of the odd numbered exercises.
- Useful: Introduction to Probability, Statistics, and Random Processes by Hossein Pishro-Nik.
- Grade Brakedown:
- Participation (10%): Discussion section activities and in-class quizzes.
- Homework (20%): Weekly online quiz (in Moodle), homework, and programming.
- 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:
- Exams:
- Midterm 1: 7pm, Wed Feb 18, Thompson 104. Focus on lectures 1-7 and pp. 1-51 [BT].
- Midterm 2: 7pm, Wed Mar 11, Integrated Science Building, Room 135. Focus on lectures 8-14 and pp. 71-118, 217-221, 264-270 [BT].
- Midterm 3: 7pm, Wed April 15, Thompson 104. Focus on lectures 15-20.
- Final: May 4, 10:30-12:30, Marcus Hall room 131. Covers entire course.
- Homework: Links are dead until the homework is posted.
- HW 1: Due 2/13 (Posted around 2/3)
- HW 2: Due 3/9 (Posted around 2/27)
- HW Extra Credit: Due 3/27 (Posted around 3/12)
- HW 3: Due 4/13 (Posted around 4/5)
- HW 4: Due 4/30 (Posted around 4/21)
- Mathematics Cheat Sheet
- Exams:
- 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 20 Jan Preliminaries, Sets, Probability 1-9 [BT] Lec 2 22 Jan Basic properties of probability 10-22 [BT] - 27 Jan [Snow Day] Disc 1 28 Jan Discussion Quiz, Simpson's Paradox Lec 3 29 Jan Conditional probability 22-28 [BT] Lec 4 3 Feb Sequential experiments 28-34 [BT] Disc 2 4 Feb Discussion: Monty Hall Monty Hall Problem Lec 5 5 Feb The total probability theorem and Bayes rule 34-41 [BT] Lec 6 10 Feb Independent trials and Basic Counting 42-51 [BT] Disc 3 11 Feb Discussion Lec 7 12 Feb More Advanced Counting 42-51 [BT] - 17 Feb [Monday Schedule] Disc 4 18 Feb Discussion: Exam Review First Revision Handout Lec 8 19 Feb Random variables and binomial distribution pp.72-81 [BT] Lec 9v1 Lec 9v2 24 Feb Geometric and Poisson Randon Variables pp. 72-81 [BT] Disc 4 25 Feb Discussion Lec 10 26 Feb Functions of Random Variables pp. 81-92 [BT] Lec 11 3 Mar Variance and Tail Bounds pp. 264-270 [BT] Disc 5 4 Mar Discussion Lec 12 5 Mar Chebyshev Bound, Multiple Random Variables pp. 264-270 [BT], pp. 92-115 [BT] Chebyshev Video Lec 13 10 Mar Covariance, Correlation and Causation pp. 217-221 [BT]. An entire website devoted to spurious corrleations. Disc 6 11 Mar Discussion: Exam Review Second Revision Handout Lec 14 12 Mar Coupon Collecting Coupon Collecting Lec 15 24 Apr Markov Chains pp. 340-362 [BT] Disc 7 25 Mar Discussion Lec 16 26 Apr Markov Chains pp. 340-362 [BT] Lec 17 31 Mar Bayesian Networks Bayesian Networks Disc 8 1 Apr Discussion - 2 Apr [No class] Lec 18 7 Apr Spam Filtering and Naive Bayes Classification Naive Bayes Disc 10 8 Apr Discussion Lec 19 9 Apr Hash Functions and Load Balancing Balls into Bins Lec 20 14 Apr Randomized Algorithms and Data Streams Disc 11 15 Apr Discussion: Exam Review Third Revision Handout Lec 21 16 Apr Game Theory Lec 22 21 Apr More Game Theory - 22 Apr [Monday Schedule] Lec 23 23 Apr Information Theory Lec 24 28 Apr Information Theory Disc 12 29 Apr Discussion: Exam Review Fourth Revision Handout