STAT 432: Basics of Statistical Learning

Welcome!

This the official website of Basics of Statistical Learning (Stat 432). To get started, please read the Course Syllabus.

Our class meets Tuesday and Thursday at 112 Transportation Building during 12:30PM - 01:50PM.
In each week, we will focus on a particular topic. Each topic is associated with a list of objectives and concepts which you need to comprehend and master. Besides meeting in class, class notes and R examples are available. We will try to practice some of them in class.
Homework assignments are designed around these objectives. They will be posted at the beginning of each week and due at Thursday 11:59PM CT of the following week. Late submission is allowed, but with penalty. Please see the syllabus for more details.
All homework should be submitted (.pdf file) to gradescope. Please use entry code: 42RBX5 to enroll.
Course discussion forum and grades are available at Canvas. Our TA will check these once

In person:
- Mon 3:30 - 4:30pm, CAB 137 (need to switch to Wed 4 - 5pm on the weeks of Sep 15, Oct 13, Nov 10 and Dec 8)
- Thur 2pm, Gregory Hall 325
Zoom:
- Tuesday 6pm - 7pm
- [Zoom Link: 85371847706, pw:432]

Week	Topic
Week 1 (Aug 25)	Introduction
Week 2 (Sep 1)	Linear Regression and Bias-variance Trade-off
Week 3 (Sep 8)	Optimization and Ridge Regression
Week 4 (Sep 15)	Lasso
Week 5 (Sep 22)	K-nearest neighbors and nonparametric estimation
Week 6 (Sep 29)	Kernel Methods, Smoothing and Adaptiveness
Week 7 (Oct 6)	Support Vector Machines
Week 8 (Oct 13)	Classification and Discriminate Analysis
Week 9 (Oct 20)	Ensemble Models: Random Forests and Boosting
Week 10 (Oct 27)	Unsupervised Learning Algorithms
Week 11 (Nov 3)	RKHS and Related Models
Week 12 (Nov 10)	Exam
Week 13 (Nov 17)	Causal Inference and Personalized Medicine
Week 14 (Nov 24)	Fall Break
Week 15 (Dec 1)	Final Project Presentation
Week 16 (Dec 8)	Final Project Presentation/Q&A

(Sep 5): There is an update of the office hours on the weeks of Sep 15, Oct 13, Nov 10 and Dec 8. The new time is Wed 4-5pm on these weeks.
(Aug 25): The current version of the RStudio (version 2025.05.1-xxx) has a bug with Copilot and may freeze your RStudio. See this post. One solution is to install unpublished daily builds from here with versions 2025.05.2-xxx. This worked for me.