IFI 9000: Research Methods with Analytics, Spring Semester 2021
Institute for Insight, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University
Face Coverings
The University System of Georgia (USG) continues to recognize COVID-19 vaccines and boosters offer safe, effective protection and urges all students, faculty, staff and visitors to get vaccinated and/or boosted either on campus or with a local provider. As USG works closely with the Georgia Department of Public Health to prioritize the health and safety of campus communities, the system encourages people to wear masks based on their preference and assessment of personal risk.
For more information about Covid, please visit Coronavirus Resources @GSU!!!
Instructors
- Houping Xiao (lead instructor; hxiao[at]gsu.edu)
Meeting Times and Locations
- Tuesday 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM (Eastern Time), GSU Downtown campus, 55 Park Place 1108
Office Hours
- Houping Office Hours: Available by appointment, 55 Park Place 1640
Course Outcomes
By the end of the semester students will be able to:
- Understand both supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods
- Know how to use supervised machine learning methods for prediction, and unsupervised machine learning for clustering and dimension reduction
- Understand image representation, processing, filtering, segmentation and feature extraction
- Know how to extract features from texts and know topic modeling and sentiment analysis
- Understand feedforward, convolutional and recurrent neural networks
- Know Autoencoders and GANs
Course Texts and Resources
- Richard Szeliski. Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications, Springer, 2011.
- Goodfellow, Ian, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville. Deep learning, MIT press, 2016.
- Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe, Convex Optimization, Cambridge University press, 2004
- Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Springer, 2009
- James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., and Tibshirani, R. An introduction to statistical learning, volume 112. Springer. 2013 [ISLR]
Grading
Percentages of course works in students’ final scores are as follow:
- Attendance and Class Participation - 10%
- Homework Assignments - 70% (7 * 10%)
- Final Presentation - 20%
- Final grade
- A+ [97%, 100%]
- A [93%, 97%)
- A- [90%, 93%)
- B+ [87%, 90%)
- B [83%, 87%)
- B- [80%, 83%)
- C+ [77%, 80%)
- C [70%, 77%)
- D [60%, 70%)
- F [0%, 60%)
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The instructor reserves the right to modify the grading scale so as to improve the letter grade if warranted by the circumstances (e.g., unusually high level of difficulty of problem sets).
- If GSU is closed for any reason on a scheduled class day, you should be prepared to adjust the schedule accordingly. In other words, the material/exam to be covered/taken on the day in which GSU is closed will be covered/taken in the next class.
Topics Schedule
Course and University Policy Statements
Syllabus Change Policy
This syllabus provides a general guideline for the conduct of this course. However, deviations will be necessary. Updates will be given during the semester and posted online through iCollege.
Class Website on iCollege
This website includes a copy of this syllabus (and any subsequent updates or changes), lecture slides, lab notes, readings, and information about the final project. It is your responsibility to check this website frequently for announcements and updates. Copies of class handouts and presentation slides will be posted on the class website before each week’s classes (if not earlier). You may find it helpful to use these to take notes during class.
Make-up Exam Policy
There is one mid-term exam in this course. Date for the exam is already set on the Tentative Course Schedule above. If there is an excusable reason for being unable to be present during the exam dates, please let the instructor know as soon as possible to schedule a make-up exam. The make-up exam if at all possible, will take place before the scheduled exam date. Students with unexcused absences for an exam will earn a 0 on the exam.
Assignments Submission Policy
- Homework and Projects are usually assigned during Lectures.
- Homework and Project Dues are by default Lecure Day 11:59 pm (EST). You will have ONE week to finish each homework.
- Assignments must be submitted to iCollege online.
- Students can submit late with the penalty of 25% deduction for every 12 hours late (up to 2 days)
- After 2 days, no more late submission is allowed
Course Evaluation and Evolution
The evaluation for the mid-term exam and 2 individual projects will be provided in the following week. And, online appointments with the instructor are available if you want to discuss your performance. Your constructive assessment of this course plays an indispensable role in shaping education at Georgia State. Upon completing the course, please take time to fill out the online course evaluation.
Attendance Policies
Students should be expected to attend class if they do not have an excused absence because of illness. We have a process for students seeking excused absences through the Dean of Students Office. Students submit documentation to https://deanofstudents.gsu.edu/student-assistance/professorabsence- notification/ . Professors will then be notified by the Dean of Students of any excused absence without the need to manage medical information individually.
Academic Honesty
Being responsible for your own learning does not mean that you must always work in isolation. However, when working in groups we encourage you to be mindful of how much effort and Learning you are experiencing. Below, we outline our expectations for work in this course. For projects, I encourage students to work together to solve and understand the problems. Nevertheless, each student is responsible for demonstrating he or she has good grasp of the material. Ultimately, each student’s project solution should reflect his or her own learning and be written in the students’ own words. While students may work together to figure out how to solve the problems, each student must run his or her own analyses and turn in their own output. For the Exam, each should work independently, no discussion is allowed. Under no circumstance should a student email his or her project solutions, project reports, and codes to a classmate. Working together (for the project) is for the purpose of collaborating, not copying. “As members of the academic community, students are expected to recognize and uphold standards of intellectual and academic integrity.” As listed on Policy on Academic Honesty.
Plagiarism (Cheating): Talking over your ideas and getting comments on your writing from friends are NOT examples of plagiarism. Taking someone else’s words (published or not) and calling them your own IS plagiarism. Plagiarism has dire consequences, including flunking the paper in question, flunking the course, and university disciplinary action, depending on the circumstances of the office. The simplest way to avoid plagiarism is to document the sources of your information carefully.
Homework: When discussing problems from assigned homework with other students, you may:
- Discuss the material presented in class or included in the assigned readings needed for solving the problem(s)
- Assist another student in understanding the statement of the problem (e.g., you may assist a non-native speaker by translating some English phrases unfamiliar to that student)
It is expected that you have independently arrived at solutions that you turn in for problem sets. The following are examples of activities that are PROHIBITED:
- Sharing solutions or fragments of solutions (via email, discussion groups, social media, whiteboard, handwritten or printed copies, etc.)
- Posting solutions or fragments of solutions in a location that is accessible to others
- Using solutions or fragments of solutions provided by other students (including students who had taken the course in the past)
- Using solutions or solution fragments obtained on the Internet or from solution manuals for textbooks
Project: When discussing laboratory assignments, you may:
- Discuss the material presented in class or included in assigned readings, documentation, user manual, etc.
- Assist another student in understanding the statement of the problem (e.g., you may assist a non-native speaker by translating some English phrases unfamiliar to that student)
- Discuss high-level ideas about how to complete the lab assignment, including problem specification, general strategies for the solution, strategies for debugging and testing code, etc. without examining code written by other students, or sharing code written by you with other students.
It is expected that you have independently arrived at solutions that you turn in for laboratory assignments. The following are examples of activities that are PROHIBITED:
- Examining, copying of code or code fragments from someone else (including online sources), other than the code that is provided to you by the instructor or included in the reference books.
- Sharing code or code fragments (via email, discussion groups, social media, whiteboard, handwritten or printed copies, etc.)
If a “friend” asks you to show him/her your code (especially if the request is to receive a copy of your code), you are opening the door wide for a possible charge of academic misconduct for both of you. I have seen friendships crumble when student A innocently supplies a copy of his/her code to student B, who then plagiarizes it, getting both in trouble. Do not be an accessory; truly help a friend by saying no. The best source for help on these assignments is the instructor or the teaching assistant. We are experienced in providing the right kind of information and help.
Exam: It is expected that you have independently arrived at solutions that you turn in for exams. The following are examples of activities that are PROHIBITED:
- Copying someone else’s solution
- Using notes, online resources, or other reference materials (unless instructed otherwise)
- Seeking, obtaining or providing help on an exam via phone, text messaging, email, social media
- Altering a graded exam for re-grading
- Getting an advance copy of the examination
- Facilitating another student to cheat (e.g., by allowing him or her to copy your solution)
- Having someone else write the exam amount to cheat on an exam.
You need to exercise special care with take-home exams. You should NEVER
- Share solutions or fragments of solutions (via email, whiteboard, handwritten or printed copies, etc.)
- Post solutions or fragments of solutions in a location that is accessible to others
- Use solutions or fragments of solutions provided by other students (including students who had taken the course in the past)
- Use solutions or solution fragments obtained on the Internet or from solution manuals for textbooks
- Use material from textbooks, reference books, online resources, or research articles without properly acknowledging and citing the source
! Warning
- Violation of the Academic Integrity policy will result in an automatic F for the concerning submission.
- Two violations ⇒ fail grade in the course
- Have discussions about homework. Every student should submit their own homework with the names of students in the discussion group explicitly mentioned.
Special Needs
Students who wish to request accommodation for a disability may do so by registering with the Office of Disability Services. Students may only be accommodated upon issuance by the Office of Disability Services of a signed Accommodation Plan and are responsible for providing a copy of that plan to instructors of all classes in which accommodations are sought. Students with special needs should then make an appointment with the instructor during the first week of the class to discuss any accommodations that need to be made.
FERPA
In keeping with USG and university policy, this course website will make every effort to maintain the privacy and accuracy of your personal information. Specifically, unless otherwise noted, it will not actively share personal information gathered from the site with anyone except university employees whose responsibilities require access to said records. However, some information collected from the site may be subject to the Georgia Open Records Act. This means that while we do not actively share information, in some cases we may be compelled by law to release information gathered from the site. Also, the site will be managed in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits the release of education records without student permission.
Sexual Harassment
In instances of sexual misconduct, the present instructor(s) and teaching assistants, are designated as Responsible Employees who are required to share with administrative officials all reports of sexual misconduct for university review. If you wish to disclose an incident of sexual misconduct confidentially, there are options on campus for you do so. For more information on this policy, please refer to the Sexual Misconduct Policy which is included in the Georgia State University Student Code of Conduct (http://codeofconduct.gsu.edu/).
Basic Needs Statement
Any student who faces challenges securing their food or housing and believes this may affect their performance in the course is urged to contact the Dean of Students for support. Furthermore, please notify the professor if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable us to provide resources that we may possess. The Embark program at GSU provides resources for students facing homelessness.