Course description

The course is designed for the students who are enrolled to the master's programme in Statistics and Machine Learning. The main aims of the course are to give an information about the program structure and opportunities, to discuss practical questions related to the studies at the program, to learn scientific writing and referencing, ethical rules, how to avoid plagiarism, and how to use library facilities.

The course consists of seminars, project work and a workshop. The seminars and workshop will be on campus.

Schedule is available on timeedit

Useful links for master studies:

• Homepage "Statistics and Machine Learning"
• Practical Guide

Course topics

Seminar 1, Monday 2024-08-26, 10:15 at Ada Lovelace: Introduction to the master's programme.  Slides here.

Seminar 2*, Monday 2024-08-26, 13:15 at Ada Lovelace: Systems and software: LISAM, R. Slides here, and R code here.

Seminar 3*, Monday 2024-08-26, 15:15 at Ada Lovelace: Writing reports: RMarkdown and LaTeX. Slides here, and RMarkdown file here.

Seminar 4, Wednesday 2024-08-28, 13:15 at Ada Lovelace: Library session. Slides here.

Seminar 5, Wednesday 2024-08-28, 15:15 at Ada Lovelace: Scientific methods and data ethics. Slides here.

Seminar 6, Thursday 2024-08-29, 08:15 at Ada Lovelace: Equal opportunities.

Seminar 7, Thursday 2024-08-29, 14:15 at Ada Lovelace: Summaries and critical reviews. Introduction to the project work. Slides here.

Workshop sessions: Roundtable discussions on the project work, more information below.

Note:

Attendance at all seminars are mandatory in order to pass the course. Seminars marked with the star (*) are optional for the students having a bachelor degree in Statistics and Data Analysis (Statistik och Dataanalys) from LiU.

Project work

You are assumed to write a short paper (3-4 pages) on one of the following course topics (choose the one that you are mostly interested in):

• Academic writing
• Writing reviews on scientific papers
• Constructive criticism in the context of higher education
• Ethical rules in the context of higher education
• Academic culture
• Equal opportunities in the context of higher education
• Data ethics and machine ethics
• Literature search, search engines
• Plagiarism in the context of higher education

In order to compose your paper, you need to do the following:

1. Make a statement in the paper about why this topic is important and mention which problems there might exist in the context of this topic.
2. Check the existing literature (scientific papers) on the topic, summarize and present important facts/theories/methods/approaches
3. Make a critical analysis of the topic by performing some of the following actions:
   • Comparing the problems/methods/approaches you described to the situation/traditions in your own country
   • Providing your own critical judgement about the theories/methods/approaches/guidelines that are present in the literature.
   • Interviewing some people about the topic of your paper, summarizing their answers in your paper and making conclusions (construct the interview questions yourself).

The paper should be written in RMarkdown or LaTeX and contain all necessary attributes of a paper such as title, author, abstract, references.

The first submission attempt is through LISAM at latest on September 29 2024, 23:59.
The second submission attempt is through LISAM at latest on October 27 2024, 23:59.
The third submission attempt is through LISAM at latest on November 24 2024, 23:59.

Workshop session

The class will be divided into groups, and all students are assumed to read the papers of all students of their group before coming to the workshop. In addition, each student is supposed to make a careful reading of one student paper (decided by the teacher) and compose some amount of discussion points/questions that would suffice for a 20 minutes discussion in the class. These questions/comments should not relate to the grammar or formatting but should rather be such questions that may raise discussions in the class. For admission to the workshop, the student should have passed his/her written report.