Labs
There are lab notebooks to accompany many weeks of the course; see the links in the schedule.
It's important to do the lab notebooks; they are designed to help you achieve learning outcomes 1 and 2 and to contribute towards your understanding of concepts and applications in machine learning, linear models and statistical inference. We strongly suggest that you work through the lab notebooks with a partner, as a paired programming exercise.
To get you started with the notebooks, there will be drop-in lab sessions in Appleton Tower in Semester 1 weeks 1 and 2. You can find all the lab times in the FDS Semester 1 Timetable. After week 2, the labs are to be done in your own study time, but there will be support available in InfBase and on Piazza.
The Week 1 lab has general instructions on getting started, which will also be available in the Week 1 lab session as a handout.
You have a choice of ways to run the labs:
- The University of Edinburgh Notable service - you just need a web browser for it to work. We recommend and support this method.
- Setting up a python/Jupyter environment - should work on a DICE machine or your own machine. We can't guarantee to be able to support you with this method.
A student in a previous year commented:
Do the labs and type them yourselves. I often referred to the solutions, because I didn't really know how to handle things, but I always typed things myself and thus I am learning a lot. This really showed in the final project!