This autumn, Stanford University is opening up their Machine Learning class to online participants. The course is taken by following videos of the lectures and performing various exercises online. The course begins on October 10, 2011, and takes a total of 10 weeks.

More information is available at: http://ml-class.com/

Compared to the "Introduction to Machine Learning" course at our department, the Stanford class is both longer and covers a broader set of topics. The details are yet unclear as a full schedule has not yet been released.

Students (at the CS dept of University of Helsinki) who successfully complete the course may apply for credits from our department. Depending on the detailed format of the Stanford course, we may or may not require taking a local exam on the topics of the online course to obtain the available credits. The course may yield 4-6 cu depending on how extensive the course turns out to be, and can be used as a replacement for our local "Introduction to Machine Learning". In case a student completes both the online course and our local course, a total of 5-7 cu will be awarded for the combination.

Note that the CS Department has no additional information or ways to influence the Stanford course. We also cannot provide additional support to students participating in the class, so students are expected to rely on the various support options provided by the instructors (at Stanford) running the class.

In case you are planning to take the online Stanford course, in addition to signing up on the Stanford website, please contact Patrik Hoyer (patrik.hoyer@helsinki.fi) by email.