Introduction to Machine Learning

10-301 + 10-601, Spring 2026
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University




Important Notes

This schedule is tentative and subject to change. Please check back often.

Tentative Schedule

Date Lecture Readings Announcements

Classification & Regression

Mon, 12-Jan Lecture 1 : Course Overview
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

HW1 Out (L1-L2)

Wed, 14-Jan Lecture 2 : Machine Learning as Function Approximation
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)]

Fri, 16-Jan Coding Lab: HW1

Mon, 19-Jan (MLK Day - No Class)

Wed, 21-Jan Lecture 3 : Decision Trees
[Slides] [Slides (Inked)] [Poll]

HW1 Slot A Due

HW2 Out (L1-L4)

Fri, 23-Jan Coding Lab: HW2

Mon, 26-Jan Lecture 4 : k-Nearest Neighbors
[Slides] [Poll]

Wed, 28-Jan Lecture 5 : Model Selection and Experimental Design
[Poll]

Linear Models

Fri, 30-Jan Lecture 6 : Perceptron
[Poll]

Mon, 2-Feb Lecture 7 : Linear Regression
  • Linear Regression. Kevin P. Murphy (2014). Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective. Chapter 7.1-7.3.

HW2 Slot A Due

HW3 Out (L4-L7)

Wed, 4-Feb Lecture 8 : Optimization for ML

Fri, 6-Feb Quiz 1 (HW1/HW2) + Recitation: HW3

Exam 1 Practice Problems out

Mon, 9-Feb Lecture 9 : Stochastic Gradient Descent / Logistic Regression

HW3 Slot A Due

Wed, 11-Feb Lecture 10 : Feature Engineering / Regularization

Fri, 13-Feb Exam 1 Review OH

Neural Networks

Mon, 16-Feb Lecture 11 : Neural Networks

Mon, 16-Feb Exam 1 (L1-L7, evening exam, details will be announced on Piazza)

HW4 Out (L8-L10)

Wed, 18-Feb Lecture 12 : Backpropagation I

Fri, 20-Feb Coding Lab: HW4

Mon, 23-Feb Lecture 13 : Backpropagation II

Societal Impacts

Wed, 25-Feb Lecture 14 : Societal Impacts of ML

HW4 Slot A Due

HW5 Out (L11-L13)

Fri, 27-Feb Coding Lab: HW5

Mon, 2-Mar (Spring break - No Class)

Tue, 3-Mar

Wed, 4-Mar (Spring break - No Class)

Thu, 5-Mar

Fri, 6-Mar (Spring break - No Class)

Learning Theory

Mon, 9-Mar Lecture 15 : PAC learning

Wed, 11-Mar Lecture 16 : PAC Learning / MLE & MAP

Fri, 13-Mar Recitation: HW6

Sun, 15-Mar

HW5 Slot A Due

HW6 Out (L14-L17)

Deep Learning

Mon, 16-Mar Lecture 17 : MLE & MAP / CNNs and RNNs
  • Deep learning. Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, & Geoffrey Hinton (2015). Nature.

Exam 2 Practice Problems out

Wed, 18-Mar Lecture 18 : RNN-LMs and Transformers-LMs
  • Deep learning. Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, & Geoffrey Hinton (2015). Nature.

Fri, 20-Mar Quiz 2 (HW4/HW5) + Exam 2 Review OH

Sat, 21-Mar

Sun, 22-Mar

HW6 Slot A Due

Mon, 23-Mar Lecture 19 : AutoDiff, Pre-training, Fine-Tuning, In-context Learning
  • Deep learning. Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, & Geoffrey Hinton (2015). Nature.

Reinforcement Learning

Wed, 25-Mar Lecture 20 : Reinforcement Learning: MDPs

Thu, 26-Mar Exam 2 (L8-17), evening exam, details will be announced on Piazza)

HW7 Out (L17-L19)

Fri, 27-Mar Coding Lab: HW7

Mon, 30-Mar Lecture 21 : Reinforcement Learning: Value/Policy Iteration

Wed, 1-Apr Lecture 22 : Reinforcement Learning: Policy Gradient / Deep RL

Fri, 3-Apr Coding Lab: HW8

Sun, 5-Apr

HW7 Slot A Due

HW8 Out (L20-L22)

Learning Paradigms

Mon, 6-Apr Lecture 23 : Recommender Systems

Wed, 8-Apr Lecture 24 : Ensemble Methods: Boosting & Bagging

Thu, 9-Apr (Spring Carnival - No Class)

Fri, 10-Apr (Spring Carnival - No Class)

Mon, 13-Apr Lecture 25 : K-Means / Dimensionality Reduction: PCA

Exam 3 Practice Problems out

Wed, 15-Apr Lecture 26 : Special Topics: Generative Models for Vision / Significance Testing for ML

Thu, 16-Apr

HW8 Slot A Due

HW9 Out (L23-L25)

Fri, 17-Apr Recitation: HW9

Mon, 20-Apr Lecture 27 : Special Topics: TBD

Wed, 22-Apr Quiz 3 (HW7/HW8) + Exam 3 Review OH

Thu, 23-Apr

HW9 Slot A Due

Fri, 24-Apr (No Class)

Apr-27 to May-04 Exam 3 (L17-L25, during Final Exam Period -- exact time/date TBD by the registrar, details will be announced on Piazza)