Course Schedule - Fall Semester 2026

     

Meeting location information can now be found on student schedules in ESTHER (for students) or on the Course Roster in ESTHER (for faculty and instructors).
Additional information available here.

COMP 345 001 (CRN: 16250)

FOUNDATIONS OF ML

Long Title: FOUNDATIONS OF MACHINE LEARNING
Department: Computer Science
Instructor: Subramanian, Devika
Meeting: 9:25AM - 10:40AM TR (24-AUG-2026 - 4-DEC-2026) 
Part of Term: Full Term
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
Language of Instruction: Taught in English
Method of Instruction: Face to Face
Credit Hours: 3
Course Syllabus:
Course Materials: Rice Campus Store
 
Restrictions:
Must be enrolled in one of the following Level(s):
Undergraduate Professional
Visiting Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Prerequisites: COMP 282 AND STAT 315
Section Max Enrollment: 50
Section Enrolled: 18
Enrollment data as of: 26-APR-2026 3:49PM
 
Additional Fees: None
 
Final Exam: Scheduled Final Exam-OTR Room
 
Description: This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the foundational principles and practical techniques of machine learning. Students will explore key concepts such as learning from data, concept classes or models, learning objectives, loss functions, and the formulation of machine learning as an optimization problem. The course will also include ethical considerations in AI and discuss topics including bias and fairness. They will gain an understanding of core ideas in generalization, model evaluation, and trade-offs between performance and resource efficiency. The course emphasizes hands-on experience in implementing and understanding ML algorithms, with a strong focus on thorough evaluation and monitoring. Topics include supervised and unsupervised learning, linear models for regression and classification, non-linear models such as decision trees, ensemble methods, and neural networks. Additional topics include nearest neighbor search and probabilistic modeling techniques such as naïve Bayes. Students will also learn basic unsupervised learning methods including clustering, PCA, and other dimensionality reduction techniques. The course covers machine learning evaluation strategies, including accuracy metrics, efficiency trade-offs, and best practices for model monitoring. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for COMP 345 if student has credit for COMP 447/COMP 546.