Course Information

  • Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00–12:15
  • Location: 1520 Microbial Sciences Building
  • Instructor: Prof. Ben Lengerich, lengerich@wisc.edu
  • TA: Chenyang Jiang, Office hours and email TBD

Course Materials

Readings

The required readings for this class include:

  • Excerpts from Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques by Daphne Koller and Nir Friedman.
  • Excerpts from An Introduction to Probabilistic Graphical Models by Michael I. Jordan.
  • Additional research papers and lecture notes.

All required readings will be provided as PDFs.

Grading

The class requirements and grading breakdown are as follows:

  • Homework Assignments (40%)
  • Quiz (10%)
  • Midterm Exam (20%)
  • Final Project (30%)

Extra Credit: Students can earn up to 3% extra credit for writing high-quality lecture notes.

Homework Assignments

There will be regular homework assignments to reinforce core concepts and computational skills. These assignments will include both theoretical problems and programming exercises.

Policies:

  • Submission: Assignments must be submitted via Canvas by 11:59 PM on Fridays unless otherwise noted.
  • Collaboration: Students may discuss problems, but all submitted work must be individual. Proper citations are required. AI tools are allowed, but the answers must reflect your understanding.
  • Late Policy: Late submissions incur a penalty of 10% per day for up to three days. Submissions more than three days late will not be accepted unless prior arrangements are made.

Quiz and Midterm Exam

  • Quiz: A single in-class quiz during Week 4 (February 13, 2025) will cover topics such as conditional independence, Bayesian networks, and Markov networks.
  • Midterm Exam: The in-class, closed-book midterm exam during Week 9 (March 18, 2025) will cover foundational topics like Bayesian networks, Markov networks, exact inference algorithms, and basic parameter learning methods.

Final Project

The final project will be completed in groups of up to three students. It will include:

  • Proposal (5%): Due March 27, 2025.
  • Midway Report (5%): Due April 3, 2025.
  • Presentation (10%): During the final week of class.
  • Final Report (15%): Due May 3, 2025.

Projects may explore probabilistic graphical models applied to real-world problems or modern probabilistic AI topics.

Extra Credit

Students can volunteer to write lecture notes for a class session. Notes must be clear, comprehensive, and well-organized. Approved notes will earn up to 3% extra credit added to the final grade. See here for details on how to submit.