10-405/10-605: ML with Large Datasets, Spring 2024

Schedule (Subject to Change)

General Policies

Late Homework Policy

You receive 4 total grace days for use on any homework assignment. We will automatically keep a tally of these grace days for you; they will be applied greedily. No assignment will be accepted more than 2 days after the deadline without written permission from the Head TAs or the Professors. You may not use more than 2 grace days on any single assignment.

All homework submissions are electronic. As such, lateness will be determined by the latest timestamp of any part of your submission. For example, suppose the homework requires submissions to both Gradescope Written and Programming– if you submit your Written on time but your Programming 1 minute late, your entire homework will be penalized for the full 24-hour period.

Once you have exhuasted your late days any submission up to 24 hours late will recieve a 50% penalty. Any work submitted after 24 hours will be graded but will not eligible for any credit.

Extensions

In general, we do not grant extensions on assignments. There are several exceptions:

• Medical Emergencies: If you are sick and unable to complete an assignment or attend class, please go to University Health Services. For minor illnesses, we expect grace days to provide sufficient accommodation. For medical emergencies (e.g. prolonged hospitalization), students may request an extension afterwards by contacting their Student Liaison or Academic Advisor and having them reach out to the course Professors or Head TAs on their behalf.
• Family/Personal Emergencies: If you have a family emergency (e.g. death in the family) or a personal emergency (e.g. mental health crisis), please contact your academic adviser or Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS). In addition to offering support, they will reach out to the instructors for all your courses on your behalf to request an extension.
• University-Approved Absences: If you are attending an out-of-town university approved event (e.g. multi-day athletic/academic trip organized by the university), you may request an extension for the duration of the trip. You must provide confirmation of your attendance, usually from a faculty or staff organizer of the event.

For any of the above situations, you may request an extension by emailing the Head TAs (smilani@andrew.cmu.edu and jrast@andrew.cmu.edu). The email should be sent as soon as you are aware of the conflict and at least 5 days prior to the deadline. In the case of an emergency, no notice is needed.

Audit Policy

Official auditing of the course (i.e. taking the course for an “Audit” grade) is not permitted this semester.

Unofficial auditing of the course (i.e. attending the lectures in person when their is space available) is welcome and permitted without prior approval. Unofficial auditors will not be given access to course materials such as homework assignments and exams.

Pass/Fail Policy

Pass/Fail is allowed in this class, no permission is required from the course staff. The grade for the Pass cutoff will depend on your program. Be sure to check with your program / department as to whether you can count a Pass/Fail course towards your degree requirements.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

If you have a disability and have an accommodations letter from the Disability Resources office, I encourage you to discuss your accommodations and needs with the Head TAs (Steph or Jacob) as early in the semester as possible. I will work with you to ensure that accommodations are provided as appropriate. If you suspect that you may have a disability and would benefit from accommodations but are not yet registered with the Office of Disability Resources, I encourage you to contact them at access@andrew.cmu.edu.

Academic Integrity Policies

Read this Carefully

Collaboration among Students

• The purpose of student collaboration is to facilitate learning, not to circumvent it. Studying the material in groups is strongly encouraged. It is also allowed to seek help from other students in understanding the material needed to solve a particular homework problem, provided no written notes (including code) are shared, or are taken at that time, and provided learning is facilitated, not circumvented. The actual solution must be done by each student alone.
• The presence or absence of any form of help or collaboration, whether given or received, must be explicitly stated and disclosed in full by all involved. Specifically, each assignment solution must include the corresponding collaboration section.
• If you gave help after turning in your own assignment and/or after answering the collaboration section, you must update your answers before the assignment’s deadline, if necessary by emailing the course staff or a Piazza post.
• Collaboration without full disclosure will be handled severely, in compliance with CMU’s Policy on Academic Integrity.

Previously Used Assignments

Some of the homework assignments used in this class may have been used in prior versions of this class, or in classes at other institutions, or elsewhere. Solutions to them may be, or may have been, available online, or from other people or sources. It is explicitly forbidden to use any such sources, or to consult people who have solved these problems before. It is explicitly forbidden to search for these problems or their solutions on the internet. You must solve the homework assignments completely on your own. We will be actively monitoring your compliance. Collaboration with other students who are currently taking the class is allowed, but only under the conditions stated above.

Generative AI

Students are encouraged to use generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT) the same way they would interact with any other collaborator. In particular, any substantive collaboration should be disclosed, and all solutions should be entirely the student’s own work. To ensure the latter, any notes or results from a collaboration should remain closed while writing up the solution, so that no material is accidentally transferred.

Policy Regarding “Found Code”

You are encouraged to read books and other instructional materials, both online and offline, to help you understand the concepts and algorithms taught in class. These materials may contain example code or pseudo code, which may help you better understand an algorithm or an implementation detail. However, when you implement your own solution to an assignment, you must put all materials aside, and write your code completely on your own, starting “from scratch”. Specifically, you may not use any code you found or came across. If you find or come across code that implements any part of your assignment, you must disclose this fact in your collaboration statement.

Duty to Protect One’s Work

Students are responsible for proactively protecting their work from copying and misuse by other students. If a student’s work is copied by another student, the original author is also considered to be at fault and in gross violation of the course policies. It does not matter whether the author allowed the work to be copied or was merely negligent in preventing it from being copied. When overlapping work is submitted by different students, both students will be punished.

To protect future students, do not post your solutions publicly, neither during the course nor afterwards.

Penalties for Violations of Course Policies

All violations (even first one) of course policies will always be reported to the university authorities (your Department Head, Associate Dean, Dean of Student Affairs, etc.) as an official Academic Integrity Violation and will carry severe penalties.

1. The penalty for the first violation is a one-and-a-half letter grade reduction. For example, if your final letter grade for the course was to be an A-, it would become a C+.
2. The penalty for the second violation is failure in the course, and can even lead to dismissal from the university.

Acknowledgments

This course is based in part on material developed by Virginia Smith, Heather Miller, William Cohen, Anthony Joseph, and Barnabas Poczos.

Previous courses: 10-605/10-805, Fall 2023, 10-605/10-805, Fall 2022, 10-405/10-605, Spring 2022, 10-605/10-805, Fall 2021; 10-405/10-605, Spring 2021; 10-605/10-805, Fall 2020; 10-405/10-605, Spring 2020.

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