Lectures

Lecturer Varun Kanade
Hours Mon, Tue, Thu: 4-5:30pm
Location Lecture Theatre A
Notes (Lecture Notes)

Note 1. I only expect there to be about 20 hours of lectures in total. I have scheduled more hours and intend to have longer lectures at the start of term to ensure that there is enough time left if rescheduling is necessary.

Note 2. A set of lecture notes (LN) covering the entire course is posted on the website. These are not meant to be used as a substitute for reading the recommended textbooks and other posted reading. These may be edited to improve readability or correct errors. If you find any errors, or have suggestions for improvements, please email the lecturer.

Note 3. There will be parts of suggested reading material that you struggle with or may seem not directly related to what we covered in the lecture. I suggest you skip these sections and only return to them once you've understood the material covered in the lecture and want to increase your understanding further.


Lecture Schedule

Date Topic Reading

12/10/2026 Setting up the PAC Learning Framework Chap 1.1-2 (LN)
Chap 1.1-2 (KV)

13/10/2026 PAC Learning Conjunctions Chap 1.2-3 (LN)
Chap 1.3 (KV)

15/10/2026 Learning k-CNF, Hardness of learing 3-term DNF Chap 1.4-5 (LN)
Chap 1.4-5 (KV)
Valiant's paper

19/10/2026 PAC Learning, Occam's Razor Chap 1.5-6, 2 (LN)
Chap 1.5, 2(KV)

20/10/2026 Occam's Razor Recap, VC Dimension; Sauer-Shelah Lemma Chap 3.1-2,5 (LN)
Chap 3.1-4(KV)

22/10/2026 Sauer-Shelah Lemma, VC Lower Bounds Chap 3.1-2,4 (LN)
Chap 3.4-6 (KV)

26/10/2026 VC Upper Bounds Chap 3.3 (LN)
Chap 3.5 (KV)

27/10/2026 Weak Learning; AdaBoost Chap 4 (LN)
Adaboost survey
Adaboost article

29/11/2026 Cryptographic Hardness of Learning Chap 5 (LN)
Chap 6 (KV)