Skip to main content Link Search Menu Expand Document (external link)
DSC 40A

Theoretical Foundations of Data Science I

DSC 40A, Spring 2025 at UC San Diego 👋

Spring 2025

SOLIS 104

TUE & THUR 5:00PM - 6:20PM

Kyle Shannon (Data Soothsayer)

kshannon@ucsd.edu

Week 1 - Modeling, Loss Functions, & Simple Linear Regression
📘 Read Chapter 1, Pages 1-12.
🍿 Watch Ahmed's Calc Review.

🧑‍🏫  Mon Mar 31

DISC No Section

🧑‍🏫  Tue Apr 1

MISC Sign Up for EdStem (class discussion board)

SUR Welcome Survey

LEC 1 Introduction to Modeling (LIVE)
blank filled

MISC Assign study groups

HW Homework 0 (not due!)
problems template solutions

🧑‍🏫  Thu Apr 3

LEC 2 Empirical Risk Minimization
blank filled recording

HOPS 1 How to Prove it!

HW Homework 1 Released (due Apr 10, 11:59 pm)

Week 2 - Loss Functions & Simple Linear Regression
📘 Read Chapter 2, Pages 1-7.
📘 Read the spread notes.

🧑‍🏫  Mon Apr 7

DISC Groupwork 1 + Proofs

🧑‍🏫  Tue Apr 8

LEC 3 Comparing Loss Functions
blank filled recording

HOPS 2 Loss Functions & Risk

🧑‍🏫  Thu Apr 10

LEC 4 Simple Linear Regression
blank filled recording

HOPS 3 MSE vs MAE vs Huber data

HW Homework 2 Released (due Apr 17, 11:59 pm)

🧑‍🏫  Mon Apr 14

DISC Groupwork 1 Review + MSE vs MAE

🧑‍🏫  Tue Apr 15

DEMO Simple Linear Regression + Huber Loss

LEC 5 Simple Linear Regression, Continued
blank filled recording

🧑‍🏫  Thu Apr 17

HOPS 4 Simple OLS Regression

LEC 6 Dot Products and Projections
blank filled recording

HW Homework 3 Released (due Apr 29, 11:59 pm)

Week 4 - Linear Algebra & Regression

🧑‍🏫  Mon Apr 21

DISC Groupwork 2

🧑‍🏫  Tue Apr 22

HOPS 4 Regression & Linear Algebra

LEC 7 Orthogonal Projections
blank filled recording

DEMO Demo 2 - Interaction Terms

🧑‍🏫  Thu Apr 24

HOPS Regression in the Real World

LEC 8 Regression and Linear Algebra
blank filled recording

Week 5 - Multiple Linear Regression & Feature Engineering

🧑‍🏫  Mon Apr 28

DISC Groupwork 2 Review

🧑‍🏫  Tue Apr 29

HOPS 6 Feature Engineering + Normal Equations additional code

HW Homework 4 Released (due May 13, 11:59 pm)

LEC 9 Multiple Linear Regression
blank filled recording

🧑‍🏫  Thu May 1

LEC 10 Feature Engineering, Gradient Descent
blank filled recording

DEMO Loss Surface Navigation + Regularization

Week 6 - Gradient Descent
📘 Read Chapter 1, Pages 16-17.
📘 Read Notes on Convexity.

🧑‍🏫  Mon May 5

DISC Midterm Review

🧑‍🏫  Tue May 6

HOPS 7 Gradient Descent

LEC 11 Gradient Descent, Continued
blank filled recording

🧑‍🏫  Thu May 8

EXAM Midterm Exam
study guide

Week 7 - Recap & Transition into Probability
📘 Read Janine's probability roadmap (in order):
       Roadmap with Questions  -  Roadmap with Answers  -  Summary

🧑‍🏫  Mon May 12

DISC Midterm Post Mortem

🧑‍🏫  Tue May 13

HOPS 8 Gradient Descent Again data

LEC 12 Foundations of Probability
blank filled recording

HW Homework 5 Released (due May 22, 11:59 pm)

🧑‍🏫  Thu May 15

LEC 13 Combinatorics
blank filled recording

DEMO Probability + Real World DS Practices

Week 8 - Probability & Combinatorics
📘 Read Chapters 1 and 2 of this online Probability Textbook.
🍿 Watch Suraj's combinatoric problems.

🧑‍🏫  Mon May 19

DISC Groupwork 4 + Basics of Probability slides

🧑‍🏫  Tue May 20

HOPS 9 Approaching Probability Problems

LEC 14 More Combinatorics Examples
blank filled recording

🧑‍🏫  Thu May 22

LEC 15 Bayes' Theorem and Independence
blank filled recording

HOPS 10 Combinatoric Problems

HW Homework 6 Released (due May 29, 11:59 pm)

Week 9 - Probability & Independence
💪 Build intuition for probability.
💪 Build intuition for conditional probability.

🧑‍🏫  Mon May 26

DISC Groupwork 4 Review + Bayes

🧑‍🏫  Tue May 27

LEC 16 Independence and Conditional Independence
blank filled recording

HOPS 11 Bayes Theorm vs Frequentist

🧑‍🏫  Thu May 29

LEC 17 Naïve Bayes
blank filled recording

DEMO Demo 6 - Multi-armed Bandit

Week 10 - Naïve Bayes & Course Conclusion
📘 Read Notes on Conditional Independence.

🧑‍🏫  Mon Jun 2

DISC Final Review (Discussion Section)

🧑‍🏫  Tue Jun 3

LEC 18 More Naïve Bayes, Review
blank filled recording

HOPS 12 Naïve Bayes

🧑‍🏫  Thu Jun 5

LEC 19 Conclusion (LIVE)

DEMO Demo K-Means Clustering

Week 11 - Final Exam Week

🧑‍🏫  Thu Jun 12

EXAM Final Exam