Data Mining with Weka: April 2015

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Class 3 is now available

The six lessons for Class 3 are now available on the course website:

https://weka.waikato.ac.nz/dataminingwithweka

After this week there are 2 weeks to go (classes 4 and 5).

The mid-course assessment is also available. Do it when you have finished Class 2 (although it will remain open for the rest of the course). The final assessment will appear during week 5. Check your profile to see that your marks have been recorded correctly.
My goal is to enable you to learn as much as possible from this course, and I recognize that doing the assessments may not be a priority for you. However, our ability to mount follow-up MOOCs will depend on the success of this one as perceived by my University -- and the number of people who complete it successfully will be a key metric. Thus I urge you to do the assessments for my sake, if not your own :-)

cheers, and keep going! Weeks 3 and 4 are the central part of this course.
Ian

Monday, 20 April 2015

Class 2 is now available

The six lessons for Class 2 are now available on the course website:

https://weka.waikato.ac.nz/dataminingwithweka

Following that, there are 3 weeks to go (classes 3, 4 and 5).

The activities are a crucial part of the course: they're where most people will do their actual learning! However, they do not form part of the assessment, so don't be scared to get wrong answers.

"Data Mining with Weka" has been designed so that participants at many different levels can learn as much as possible – and complete the course successfully. You don't have to do the reading. All you must do to succeed

are the mid-course and final assessments -- which you can try as often as you like. The mid-course assessment will become available this week (24 April) and remain open for the rest of the course. The final assessment will appear during week 5.

cheers, and keep going!

Ian

Monday, 13 April 2015

Welcome to "Data Mining with Weka"

Welcome to the course "Data Mining with Weka". The six lessons for Class 1 are now available on the course website

https://weka.waikato.ac.nz/

We will release classes 2, 3, 4, and 5 at approximately the same time (Monday noon NZ time) in the upcoming weeks, and send reminder announcements.

The course includes the following resources:

the Weka software; Lesson 1.2 gives downloading instructions (we are using version 3.6.11)
videos, one per lesson, on YouTube
the videos include captions (English and Chinese), which can be turned on in YouTube
we recommend viewing in HD format, again a YouTube control
slides used in the videos (PDF format)
text files containing transcripts of the videos
activities that follow each lesson
access to selected excerpts from Data Mining (3rd Edition) - plus you can buy a discounted copy from the publisher
mid-course assessment (opens 24 April, in Week 2)
final assessment (opens 15 May, in Week 5)
announcement forum, blog, twitter feed (available from the course website)
discussion forum: Teaching Assistants will be available to help you. Primarily this will be in English but some of the Assistants have said they can also help in other languages.

for Chinese participants:

videos on Youku

one version with captions in Chinese (another with English captions is available on our Youku channel)

Some notes for participants:

work through the videos and activities at your own pace, in your own time
a new class appears every week; old classes will remain available until the course closes

in theory, you could leave all your learning to the last week (we don't recommend this!)

please subscribe to the announcement forum if you haven't already done so: this is the best way to stay up-to-date with the course (click on Membership and email settings to subscribe)
only the mid-course and final assessments count towards the Statement of Completion
feel free to install Weka in advance, but please ensure that you have version 3.6.11
if you already know something about Weka, feel free to skip the first class (or two)
during the videos, it may help to follow with Weka on your own computer ("click along with Ian")
the course should take 2–3 hours/week (3–4 hours if you do the optional reading)
you can download the materials from http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/mooc/dataminingwithweka/