CSCI 5525 - Advanced Machine Learning

Lecture details and list of relevant reading materials/references for Advanced Machine Learning course (CSCI - 5525) offered at Computer Science and Engineering department, University of Minnesota, Fall 2025.

  • Instructor: Aryan Deshwal
  • Time/Location: 02:30 PM ‑ 03:45 PM TTh

Relevant Textbooks

PRML: Pattern recognition and Machine Learning, Chris Bishop

Deep Learning: Foundations and Concepts, Chris Bishop and Hugh Bishop

GPML: Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning, Carl Edward Rasmussen and Christopher K. I. Williams

PML: Probabilistic Machine Learning: Advanced Topics, Kevin Murphy

Lecture Topic Reading Materials/References
1 Introduction to Machine Learning and its History -- Additional Resources:
Bernhard Schölkopf's excellent ML history lecture at MLSS 2020
2 Introduction to Probabilistic Modeling with Linear Regression PRML Chapter 1-3, GPML Chapter 1
3 Gaussian Processes and Kernel Methods GPML Chapter 2-4

-- Additional Resources:
Dive into Deep Learning Chapter 18 on GPs
Kanagawa et al., Gaussian Processes and Kernel Methods: A Review on Connections and Equivalences
GpyTorch
4 Generalization, Model selection and Occam's razor GPML Chapter 5

-- Additional Resources:
David Mackay's book Chapter 28
Lotfi et al., Bayesian Model Selection, the Marginal Likelihood, and Generalization
5 Bayesian Decision Theory PRML Chapter 1.5

-- Additional Resources:
Roman Garnett's Bayesian Optimization Chapter 4 and 5
6 Neural Networks: Learning Representations Bishop Deep Learning Chapter 6
7 Backpropagation and Automatic Differentiation Bishop Deep Learning Chapter 8

-- Additional Resources:
Andrej Karpathy's post on backpropagation
8 Stochastic Optimization Bishop Deep Learning Chapter 7
9 Training tips for Neural Networks Deep Learning Tuning Playbook
Andrej Karpathy's A Recipe for Training Neural Networks
Experiment Management
10 Attention and Transformers Bishop Deep Learning Chapter 12
11 Deep Latent Variable Models: Variational Autoencoders Murphy PML (Advanced Topics) Chapter 21
12 Diffusion Models Murphy PML (Advanced Topics) Chapter 25
13 Autoregressive Models Murphy PML (Advanced Topics) Chapter 22
14 Reinforcement Learning (RL): Exploration/Exploitation Tradeoff Murphy PML (Advanced Topics) Chapter 22
14 Policy based RL Murphy PML (Advanced Topics) Chapter 22
15 Bayesian Optimization BoTorch Tutorials