๐ข๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ป-๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ ๐ ๐ต๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ๐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐ฎ๐๐๐ผ-๐๐ฒ๐๐๐ - ๐ณ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐ฎ๐น ๐ฎ๐น๐ด๐ผ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ต๐บ๐ ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ผ๐บ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ป๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ๐
This year I’ve been designing homework assignments for an ML course at Skoltech (Russia’s answer to MIT/Caltech for science and technology). After bombing more job interviews than I care to count, I think I’ve finally figured out what I was personally missing during my studies - a deep understanding of a relatively small set of fundamental algorithms. Well, my pain is the next generation’s gain!
In my engineering worldview, you can’t truly understand something unless you’ve built a replica from scratch with your own hands. At the same time, I didn’t want learning to stall at the terror of a blank page. I wanted to guide students toward each problem step by step. Show them how it’s assembled from small building blocks.
Once I’d settled on how to frame the problems, the remaining question was how to grade them and give students feedback. Sure, you could review solutions by hand - but that puts a massive load on the teaching team and robs students of the chance to learn from their own mistakes. So why not borrow from industry software development and go all-in on automated testing? Students get a starter template and a test suite. And then… well, then they’re adults who need to learn to read error messages and meet the spec by any means necessary.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐๐น๐: a set of classic machine learning exercises with automated test-based grading. Which means anyone can try these assignments and feel just a tiiiiiny bit like a Skoltech student.
The course has already finished, and I am free to ๐ฝ๐๐ฏ๐น๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐๐ฒ๐ป๐ - https://lnkd.in/e3RV3Xq6
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐๐ถ๐น๐น ๐ณ๐ถ๐ป๐ฑ:
Notebooks with tasks
Helper scripts to keep the main jupyter notebooks clean
Auto-tests to provide students with immediate feedback and to automate grading
Grading script sto allow students see what grade they are going to get, prevents them to accidentally use extra files and get 0!
Pre-generated data for tests
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ ๐ฝ๐๐ฏ๐น๐ถ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ฎ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐บ๐ถ๐๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐น๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐ฒ - feel free to build upon it or re-use it in any way you want.