This course aims at attending data mining competitions (e.g., KDD cup). So this is not a place for you to learn basic materials of machine learning and data mining.
There are so many machine learning techniques and no body can be familiar with all. Therefore, some very basic understanding of machine learning might be enough. You must be able to find and learn new techniques by yourselves while working on this course.
To obtain good competition results, we pay much attention to each team. So we cannot take too many students. According to the turnaround in the 1st week, in the 2nd week teachers will announce a way to choose these 25 students (if more would like to enroll). After that, students will be separated to various groups (presumably three students per group).
The answer is similar to the previous question. We will announce our decision soon.
If you are a first-year master student, this course will take at least one third of your course time.
We have a homepage (as you are reading it). However, the course wiki will be the main place to give details. You will see our progress on the competitions there. Every student will get a wiki account.
Yes and no. Based on the discussion in the class, you need to improve your competition results and present results in the following week.
Yes. We will do this in the first or the second week.
No, you should work as hard as others. Because teams must present their work everyweek, we will clearly know how each student performs.
Basically no unless you think slides can better indicate your ideas and results. However, your presentation must clearly show your progress and problems. Sometimes we even would like to directly see your code and experimental environments.
Failed approaches indeed show something. You should frankly present what you have tried. Competition results are related but not strongly related to your final scores.
They depend on the competition tasks and your approaches. In general the deptartment's machines (e.g., 217) should be enough. If additional resources are needed, we will try to check what we can provide.
Mainly on your class performance. We will evaluate your performances at least three times in the semester. It's a bit similar to the industry systems (if you work at a company, you are evaluated every quarter).
It depends on lots of factors and the instructors will decide later (after the actual competition is announced). It is possible that we will only allow selective teams to submit results and/or to form a new ensemble of teams for submission. In any case, every team's contribution (with ideas and either positive or negative results) would be fairly acknowledged. At the current point, the policy is that no individuals nor teams may submit their results to KDD Cup 2010 unless granted by the instructors in advance. Violating the policy would lead to serious punishments.
Of course. You pass only if you work hard enough. (Similarly, in industry, underperformers will be fired).
No.
No, I am very sorry. And it's useless if you keep bugging the teacher.