MIE1513: Decision Support Systems S.

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MIE1513: Decision Support Systems

Instructor: Prof. Markus Asta ([email protected])

Office hours: TBD
Lectures: Mon, 10:10-13:00 (RS208)
Lab and Practical: Thurs, 14:10-16:00 (RS303)
TA contact info: Jamal Chu ([email protected])
Anton Korikov ([email protected])
Mohammad Mahdi Abdollah Pour ([email protected])
Armin Toroghi ([email protected])
Jolomi Tosanwumi ([email protected])

Course description
This course provides students with an understanding of the role of a decision support system in
an organization, its components, and the theories and techniques used to construct them. The
course will cover basic technologies for information analysis from a data-driven perspective cover-
ing information retrieval, machine learning, recommender systems, data science, natural language
processing, and social network analysis as they pertain to decision support applications.

Course structure
Lecture Learn about Decision Support Systems from an Information Engineering perspective
Lab Learn how to use Python-based tools to support lecture and project topics (mandatory)

Course goals
Become proficient with engineering and analysis tools for data-driven Decision Support Systems:

• Understand search engines, ranking, and evaluation.

• Understand the machine learning concepts of classification and clustering.

• Understand the text processing pipeline from documents through to basic linguistic analysis.

• Understand the fundamentals of recommender systems.

• Understand basic principles of data science and data visualization.

• Apply all of the above in Python. Why Python?

– Rich libraries make it tool of choice for data analysis in industry

– Portable (not OS dependent) and shareable (e.g., IPython)

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Grading

Assignment Weight Date

Python Warmup 5% Week 2 (Sunday, Sept 17)
Project 1 (Information Retrieval) 7% Week 4 (Sunday, Oct 1)
Project 2 (Machine Learning) 7% Week 6 (Sunday, Oct 15)
Midterm exam 25% Week 8 (Monday, Oct 23, 10:10-12:00 in class)
Project 3 (Recommender Systems) 7% Week 8 (Sunday, Oct 29)
Project 4 (Text Mining/Analysis) 7% Week 10 (Sunday, Nov 19)
Project 5 (Topic: TBD) 7% Week 12 (Sunday, Dec 3)
Final exam 35% Finals week

Projects are due at 10:00pm on the due date listed.

Project submissions and late policy
• Project submissions will be online through github (instructions provided in lab).
• Projects up to 48h late will be given a 30% penalty (i.e., deduction of 30/100).
• Extensions are only granted with official medical documentation that clearly indicates the
dates of illness – if approved, the extension is calculated as the original due date
plus the number of approved a↵ected days, hence do not wait until the extension
is approved to submit the work since it may be too late to submit at that point.
• I do not allow projects to be dropped and points reallocated, only extensions are given on
successful petition (see previous point).

Academic honesty
Reusing portions of any assignment solution (past or present) that you did not write constitutes
plagiarism, as well as the following:
• Copying any segment of code from any source.
– Exception: Short snippets ( 10 lines) of helper code from coding support websites (e.g.,
StackOverflow) may be used or adapted with attribution to the specific URL.
• Submitting code that you did not write yourself personally.
– Exception: Autocompletion tools (e.g., CoPilot) are allowed if you comment in your file
that such tools were used. You will not receive credit for code you cannot fully explain.
Students suspected of plagiarism on an assignment will be referred to the department for formal
discipline for breaches of the Student Code of Conduct.

Student responsibilities
• Respect that other students want to listen to the lecture; please do not talk during lecture.
• Lab/practical: outside of Piazza, this will be your primary method of interacting with TAs.
• Ask questions in (or immediately after) class, lab, office hours, or on Piazza.
– Personal email responses will be “ask on Piazza or see me in office hours”.

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Preliminary Schedule of topics

The schedule of topics below is subject to change. DSS = Decision Support Systems, IR = Infor-
mation Retrieval, ML = Machine Learning, REC = Recommender Systems, TM = Text Mining,
DS = Data Science.

The following schedule of topics is subject to change without notice:

Week Lecture Lab / Practical Topic Due

1 (Sep 4) Intro to DSS, Intro to IR —
2 (Sep 11) IR (Indexing and Retrieval) github, Colab, (I)Python Python Warmup
3 (Sep 18) IR (Evaluation) Project 1
4 (Sep 25) ML (Classification) Project 1 Project 1
5 (Oct 2) ML (Clustering) Project 2
6 (Oct 9) REC (Nearest Neighbor) Project 2 Project 2
7 (Oct 16) TM (Document Processing) Project 3
8 (Oct 23) TM (Linguistic Processing) Project 3 Project 3
9 (Oct 30) DS (Basic Data Science) Project 4
– (Nov 6) Fall Study Break –
10 (Nov 13) DS (Data Visualization) Project 4 Project 4
11 (Nov 20) TBD Project 5
12 (Nov 27) TBD Project 5 Project 5
13 (Dec 4) Related DSS Topics, Review No Lab

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Course Logistics
• You are responsible for monitoring Quercus for course announcements and logistics and
Piazza for lecture, assignment, lab, and exam-related questions.

• All lectures and labs will be delivered in person unless other instructions are provided. You
are responsible for attending both lab and lecture. There is examinable material discussed in
the lectures that is not explicitly stated in the slides.

• All assignments will be made available via github (via a URL posted to the Assignment
section of Quercus) and must be committed to github (your last github commit time stamp
will serve as the submission time). You will need a github account to access and commit your
assignments. Logistics of assignment checkout and submission will be covered in lab.

– Part of each assignment grade is a one-on-one code review with a TA. These code
reviews will be done during lab starting the week of Sept 18 — missing a code review
will lead to a 0 for that portion of the assignment grade.

• Labs and assignments require the use of Jupyter notebooks. All notebooks can be loaded in
Google Colab (as will be discussed and demonstrated during lab). If you lack direct access
to Google Colab, you should be able to login to ECF machines to access it. Otherwise, you
will need to run and install Python and Jupyter notebooks on your own device; TAs cannot
provide installation support for your personal device.

• Instructor office hours are TBD.

– TAs do not have office hours; questions should be asked during lab and via Piazza.

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Additional Information
University Land Acknowledgement
I wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of
years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of
the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across
Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Wellness and Mental Health Support

As a university student, you may experience a range of health and/or mental health challenges that
could result in significant barriers to achieving your personal and academic goals. The University of
Toronto and the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering o↵er a wide range of free and confidential
services that could assist you during these times.
As a U of T Engineering student, you have a Departmental Undergraduate Advisor or a Depart-
mental Graduate Administrator who can support you by advising on personal matters that impact
your academics. Other resources that you may find helpful are listed on the U of T Engineering
Mental Health & Wellness webpage, and a small selection are also included here:

• U of T Engineering’s Mental Health Programs Officer

• Accessibility Services & the On-Location Advisor

• Health & Wellness and the On-Location Health & Wellness Engineering Counsellor

• Graduate Engineering Council of Students’ Mental Wellness Commission

• SKULE Mental Wellness

• U of T Engineering’s Learning Strategist and Academic Success

• Registrar’s Office and Scholarships & Financial Aid Office & Advisor

We encourage you to access these resources as soon as you feel you need support; no issue is
too small.
If you find yourself feeling distressed and in need of more immediate support, consider reaching
out to the counsellors at U of T Telus Health Student Support or visiting U of T Engineering’s
Urgent Support – Talk to Someone Right Now.

Accommodations
The University of Toronto supports accommodations for students with diverse learning needs, which
may be associated with mental health conditions, learning disabilities, autism spectrum, ADHD,
mobility impairments, functional/fine motor impairments, concussion or head injury, visual impair-
ments, chronic health conditions, addictions, D/deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, communication
disorders and/or temporary disabilities, such as fractures and severe sprains, or recovery from an
operation.
If you have a learning need requiring an accommodation the University of Toronto recommends
that students register with Accessibility Services as soon as possible.

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Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Looking for community? Feeling isolated? Not being understood or heard?
You are not alone. You can talk to anyone in the Faculty that you feel comfortable approaching,
anytime – professors, instructors, teaching assistants, first-year or upper years academic advisors,
student leaders or the Assistant Dean of Diversity, Inclusion and Professionalism.
You belong here. In this class, the participation and perspectives of everyone is invited and
encouraged. The broad range of identities and the intersections of those identities are valued and
create an inclusive team environment that will help you achieve academic success. You can read
the evidence for this approach here.
You have rights. The University Code of Student Conduct and the Ontario Human Rights
Code protect you against all forms of harassment or discrimination, including but not limited to
acts of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism
and ageism. Engineering denounces unprofessionalism or intolerance in language, actions or inter-
actions, in person or online, on- or o↵-campus. Engineering takes these concerns extremely seriously
and you can confidentially disclose directly to the Assistant Dean for help here.
Resource List:

• Engineering Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Groups, Initiatives & Student Resources

• Engineering Positive Space Resources

• Request a religious-based accommodation

• Email Marisa Sterling, P.Eng, the Assistant Dean, Diversity, Inclusion & Professionalism

• Make a confidential disclosure of harassment, discrimination or unprofessionalism online, by

email [email protected] or by calling 416.946.3986

• Email the Engineering Society Equity & Inclusivity Director

• U of T Equity Offices & First Nations House

Academic Integrity
All students, faculty and sta↵ are expected to follow the University’s guidelines and policies on
academic integrity. For students, this means following the standards of academic honesty when
writing assignments, collaborating with fellow students, and writing tests and exams. Ensure that
the work you submit for grading represents your own honest e↵orts. Plagiarism—representing
someone else’s work as your own or submitting work that you have previously submitted for marks
in another class or program—is a serious o↵ence that can result in sanctions. Speak to me or your
TA for advice on anything that you find unclear. To learn more about how to cite and use source
material appropriately and for other writing support, see the U of T writing support website.
Consult the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters for a complete outline of the University’s
policy and expectations. For more information, please see the U of T Academic Integrity website.

Quercus Information
This course uses the University’s learning management system, Quercus, to post information about
the course. This includes posting readings and other materials required to complete class activities
and course assignments, as well as sharing important announcements and updates. The site is
dynamic and new information and resources will be posted regularly as we move through the term,

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so please make it a habit to log in to the site on a regular, even daily, basis. To access the course
website, go to the U of T Quercus log-in page at https://q.utoronto.ca. Once you have logged in
to Quercus using your UTORid and password, you should see the link or ”card” for this course.
You may need to scroll through other cards to find this. Click on this link to open our course area,
view the latest announcements and access your course resources.There are Quercus help guides for
students that you can access by clicking on the ”?” icon in the left side column.
SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT GRADES POSTED ONLINE: Please also note that any grades
posted are for your information only, so you can view and track your progress through the course.
No grades are considered official, including any posted in Quercus at any point in the term, until
they have been formally approved and posted on ACORN at the end of the course. Please contact
me as soon as possible if you think there is an error in any grade posted on Quercus.

Lecture Capture by Instructor

If lecture recordings are provided, they are only for the exclusive use of enrolled students, for their
personal learning. Lecture recordings are not to be shared in any way beyond enrolled students.