University of Pennsylvania · Fall 2026

CIS 5200: Machine Learning

Instructor: Jake Gardner · Lecture: Mon/Wed 1:45-3:14pm · Leidy Laboratories 10

Weekly Schedule

Wk.	Date	Lecture	Recitation	Homework	Exams
1	WedAug 26	Course Introduction Recording Notes	–	–	–
2	MonAug 31	Supervised Learning Setup Recording Notes	Recitation 1: Course Intro + Math Review SlidesRecordings	HW0out 9/2	–
2	WedSep 2	k-Nearest Neighbors, Curse of Dimensionality Recording Notes	Recitation 1: Course Intro + Math Review SlidesRecordings	HW0out 9/2	–
3	MonSep 7	Labor Day (No Class)	Recitation 2: kNN + Linear Models SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	–
3	WedSep 9	Linear Models, Perceptron Recording Notes		–	–
4	MonSep 14	Gradient Descent Recording Notes	Recitation 3: Gradient Descent SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	HW0due 9/16 HW1out 9/16	–
4	WedSep 16	Gradient Descent, Empirical Risk Minimization Recording Notes		HW0due 9/16 HW1out 9/16	–
5	MonSep 21	Linear Regression, Logistic Regression Recording Notes	Recitation 4: Linear Regression + Logistic Regression SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	–
5	WedSep 23	Linear Regression, Logistic Regression (continued) Recording Notes		–	–
6	MonSep 28	Linear Support Vector Machines Recording Notes	Recitation 5: SVMs + Intro to Kernels SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	–
6	WedSep 30	Nonlinear Modeling, Kernels Recording Notes		–	–
7	MonOct 5	Kernels Continued, Kernel SVMs or Gaussian Processes Recording Notes	Recitation 6: Kernels + Neural Networks SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	HW1due 10/7 HW2out 10/7	–
7	WedOct 7	Neural Networks Recording Notes		HW1due 10/7 HW2out 10/7	–
8	MonOct 12	Decision Trees Recording Notes	Midterm Review Session (no recitation) SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	–
8	WedOct 14	Review for Midterm Recording Notes		–	–
9	MonOct 19	Midterm Exam	Recitation 7: Boosting SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	Midterm ExamMon Oct 19
9	WedOct 21	Boosting I (Gradient Boosted Regression Trees) Recording Notes	Recitation 7: Boosting SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	Midterm ExamMon Oct 19
10	MonOct 26	Boosting II (AdaBoost) Recording Notes	Recitation 8: Bagging + Random Forests SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	HW2due 10/26 HW3out 10/26	–
10	WedOct 28	Bagging, Random Forests Recording Notes		HW2due 10/26 HW3out 10/26	–
11	MonNov 2	Bias-Variance Decomposition Recording Notes	Recitation 9: Bias/Variance + Debugging Walkthrough SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	Oral Assessment 1Wed Nov 4
11	WedNov 4	Model Debugging Recording Notes		–	Oral Assessment 1Wed Nov 4
12	MonNov 9	Performance Metrics Recording Notes	Recitation 10: Metrics + PCA + Autoencoders SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	HW3due 11/9 HW4out 11/9	–
12	WedNov 11	PCA, Autoencoders Recording Notes		HW3due 11/9 HW4out 11/9	–
13	MonNov 16	Transformers I Recording Notes	Recitation 11: Transformers SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	Oral Assessment 2Wed Nov 18
13	WedNov 18	Transformers II, LLM Pretraining Recording Notes		–	Oral Assessment 2Wed Nov 18
14	MonNov 23	No Class	–	HW4due 11/23 HW5out 11/23	–
14	WedNov 25	Thanksgiving Break (No Class)	–	HW4due 11/23 HW5out 11/23	–
15	MonNov 30	LLM Post-training (SFT, RL) Recording Notes	Final Review Session (tentative) SlidesRecordingsWorksheetSolutions	–	–
15	WedDec 2	Diffusion or Flow Matching Recording Notes		–	–
16	MonDec 7	Final Exam	–	HW5due 12/7	Final ExamMon Dec 7

Semester runs August 24, 2026 – December 7, 2026. Topics are tentative and may change.