Lecture

Fundamentals of Inference and Learning

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In course

EE-411: Fundamentals of inference and learning

This is an introductory course in the theory of statistics, inference, and machine learning, with an emphasis on theoretical understanding & practical exercises. The course will combine, and alternate, between mathematical theoretical foundations and prac ...

Description

This lecture introduces the course on the theory of statistics, inference, and machine learning, focusing on theoretical understanding and practical exercises in Python. Topics include statistical and Bayesian inference, supervised and unsupervised learning, statistical learning theory, deep learning, and basics of generative models and reinforcement learning. The course structure involves a combination of mathematical foundations and practical computational aspects, with exercises and projects contributing significantly to the final grade.

Instructor

Florent Gérard Krzakala

Official source

Related concepts (24)

Machine learning

Machine learning (ML) is an umbrella term for solving problems for which development of algorithms by human programmers would be cost-prohibitive, and instead the problems are solved by helping machines 'discover' their 'own' algorithms, without needing to be explicitly told what to do by any human-developed algorithms. Recently, generative artificial neural networks have been able to surpass results of many previous approaches.

Reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine learning paradigms, alongside supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Reinforcement learning differs from supervised learning in not needing labelled input/output pairs to be presented, and in not needing sub-optimal actions to be explicitly corrected.

Statistical inference

Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability. Inferential statistical analysis infers properties of a population, for example by testing hypotheses and deriving estimates. It is assumed that the observed data set is sampled from a larger population. Inferential statistics can be contrasted with descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics is solely concerned with properties of the observed data, and it does not rest on the assumption that the data come from a larger population.

Unsupervised learning

Unsupervised learning, is paradigm in machine learning where, in contrast to supervised learning and semi-supervised learning, algorithms learn patterns exclusively from unlabeled data. Neural network tasks are often categorized as discriminative (recognition) or generative (imagination). Often but not always, discriminative tasks use supervised methods and generative tasks use unsupervised (see Venn diagram); however, the separation is very hazy. For example, object recognition favors supervised learning but unsupervised learning can also cluster objects into groups.

Self-supervised learning

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a paradigm in machine learning for processing data of lower quality, rather than improving ultimate outcomes. Self-supervised learning more closely imitates the way humans learn to classify objects. The typical SSL method is based on an artificial neural network or other model such as a decision list. The model learns in two steps. First, the task is solved based on an auxiliary or pretext classification task using pseudo-labels which help to initialize the model parameters.

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