CMSC5724 Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery

Fall 2024

Professor: Yufei Tao

TA: Nawapon Sangsiri (nawaponsangsiri@cuhk.edu.hk)
TA office hour: 3-4pm every Tue; office: RM 115, SHB.

Quick navigation links:
[Lecture Notes][Exercises and Quizzes][Project]
Brief Description

This course will cover the conceptual and algorithmic aspects of fundamental problems in data mining and knowledge discovery, including (subject to time permission) classification, clustering, association rule analysis, and so on. On completion, students are expected to have developed the ability to perform an array of mining tasks that are essential to numerous applications in practice.

Announcements

News 23 (Dec 23): The final exam scores have been released on Blackboard. The stats can be found in the "Exercises and Quizzes" section of this page.

News 22 (Dec 4): You can now view your Quiz 3 scores on Blackboard. The solutions can be found in the "Exercises and Quizzes" section. You may collect your papers from the TA during his office hours. The information of his office hours can be found at the top of this page.

News 21 (Nov 30): In the final exam, you are allowed to bring in a single-sided, A4-sized, note sheet on which you can print/write anything you deem useful.

News 20 (Nov 22): Project 6 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 19 (Nov 22) Quiz 3 will start at 9pm in tonight's lecture. The scope covers everything from Lecture 8 to Lecture 10.

News 18 (Nov 18): You can now view your Project 2 scores on Blackboard.

News 17 (Nov 17): Project 5 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 16 (Nov 12): Project 4 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 15 (Nov 12): The final exam will be held from 6:30pm to 8:30pm on Dec 13 (Friday). The venue will be WMY 306.

News 14 (Nov 8): Project 3 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 13 (Nov 8): You can now view your Project 1 scores on Blackboard.

News 12 (Nov 8): You can now view your Quiz 2 scores on Blackboard. The solutions can be found in the "Exercises and Quizzes" section. You may collect your papers from the TA during his office hours. The information of his office hours can be found at the top of this page.

The TA's office is at RM 115, SHB. If you need help in accessing the room, please contact the TA by email (nawaponsangsiri@cuhk.edu.hk).

News 11 (Nov 1) Quiz 2 will start at 9pm in tonight's lecture. The scope covers everything from Lecture 4 to Lecture 7.

News 10 (Oct 10): The instructor has noted that 11 Oct (Fri) is a public holiday with no lectures. Therefore, the remaining quizzes will all be postponed by one week. The new test schedule is:

Quiz 2 (20 minutes): To be held in the lecture of 1 Nov (Fri, Week 9)
Quiz 3 (20 minutes): To be held in the lecture of 29 Nov (Fri, Week 13).

News 9 (Oct 5): Project 2 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 8 (Oct 5): You can now view your Quiz 1 scores on Blackboard. The solutions can be found in the "Exercises and Quizzes" section. You may collect your papers from the TA during his office hours. The information of his office hours can be found at the top of this page.

News 7 (Sep 23): All quizzes in this course are open book.

News 6 (Sep 21): Project 1 has been released. Please scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.

News 5 (Sep 21): Quiz 1 will start at 9pm in the lecture of Sep 27. The scope covers everything from Lecture 1 to Lecture 3.

News 4 (6 Sep): Exercise List 1 has been released. Please scroll to the "Exercises and Quizzes" section at the bottom of the page. There will not be further announcements about exercise releases. Please check that section periodically.

News 3 (6 Sep): The video of the first lecture has been released. There will not be further announcements about video releases. Please check this page periodically. In general, video releases are not guaranteed, but the instructor plans to release them as long as they have been properly recorded.

News 2 (6 Sep): Please note the test schedule for this course:

Quiz 1 (20 minutes): To be held in the lecture of 27 Sep (Fri, Week 4)
Quiz 2 (20 minutes): To be held in the lecture of 25 Oct (Fri, Week 8) 1 Nov (Fri, Week 9)
Quiz 3 (20 minutes): To be held in the lecture of 22 Nov (Fri, Week 12) 29 Nov (Fri, Week 13).

News 1 (5 Sep): Hello all.

Time, Venues, and Zoom Link

Lecture: 6:30pm - 9:15pm Fri, Wu Ho Man Yuen Bldg 304
Zoom Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/97424266516

Click here for a map of the campus.

Grading Scheme

Project: 30%
Short Tests or Assignments: 30%
Final: 40%

Textbook and Lecture Notes

No textbooks cover all the material of this course. Some reference books may be useful for extra reading:

[Book 1] Mohammed J. Zaki, and Wagner Meira Jr. Data Mining and Analysis: Fundamental Concepts and Algorithms.
[Book 2] Avrim Blum, John Hopcroft, and Ravindran Kannan. Foundations of Data Science.

Ownership of the above books is not mandatory. The instructor will make lecture notes available before each class. His notes cover all the content required in this course, some of which is outside the above books.

As usual, lecture attendance is vital for thorough understanding.

Lecture Notes Extra Reading
1
[Classification] Decision Trees and a Generalization Theorem
(video)

Chapter 19 of [Book 1]
Sec 5.5-5.6 of [Book 2]
2
[Classification] The Bayesian Method
(video)

Sections 18.1-18.2 of [Book 1]
3
[Classification] Perceptron
(video)

 Section 5.8.3 of [Book 2]
4
[Classification] Generalization Theorems Using VC-Dims and Margins
(video 1)
(video 2)

--
5
[Classification] SVM and Margin Perceptron
(video)

Sections 21.1-21.2 of [Book 1]
6
[Classification] The Kernel Method
(video)

Sec 21.4 of [Book 1]
7
[Classification] Multiclass Perceptron
(video)

--
8
[Clustering] Centroid Methods
(video)

Section 13.1 of [Book 1]
9
[Clustering] Connectivity Methods
(video)

Chapter 14 and Section 15.1 of [Book 1]
10
[Dimensionality Reduction] PCA. (Updated at 2:30am, 17 Nov)
(Old version)

(video 1)
(video 2)

See here for a nice example of using PCA for image compression.

Section 7.2 of [Book 1]
11
[Association Rules] Apriori

(video)

Sections 8.1, 8.2.1, and 8.3 of [Book 1]
12
[Graph Mining] Page Ranks and Random Walks

(video)

--

Exercises and Quizzes

The instructor designed the following exercises to help you consolidate your understanding of the course material. Solutions are provided in full.

Exercise List 1 (Solutions)
Exercise List 2 (Solutions) Note: Problem 5 is outside the scope of quizzes and exams
Exercise List 3 (Solutions)
Exercise List 4 (Solutions)
Exercise List 5 (Solutions)
Exercise List 6 (Solutions)
Exercise List 7 (Solutions)
Exercise List 8 (Solutions)
Exercise List 9 (Solutions)
Exercise List 10 (Solutions)
Exercise List 11 (Solutions)
Exercise List 12 (Solutions)

Quiz 1 solutions.
Quiz 2 solutions.
Quiz 3 solutions.
Final exam (full mark 125): Max = 120, Average = 80.9, Std. Dev. = 17.4

Project

The project page is here.

Deadlines:
  • For Project 1 11:59pm, 21 Oct, 2024
  • For Project 2 11:59pm, 4 Nov, 2024
  • For Project 3 11:59pm, 9 Dec, 2024
  • For Project 4 11:59pm, 11 Dec, 2024
  • For Project 5 11:59pm, 16 Dec, 2024
  • For Project 6 11:59pm, 21 Dec, 2024
To submit your project, pack all the deliverables (as detailed on the project page) into a Zip file and submit the file in the Blackboard system. Remember to list the ids and names of all the members in your team.