Northeastern University

DS 3000: Foundations of Data Science

Spring 2025 Course Syllabus (CRN: 37085)

Professor Info

Instructor: Dr. Mohit Singhal Office: ME 306A

Email: [email protected] Email Prefix: [DS 3000]:
Links

Canvas Page: Canvas Login

Gradescope: Gradescope Link Piazza: Piazza Link
OH Link: OH App Link OH App Help Guide: OH App Help Guide

TL;DR Summary (See following pages for detailed syllabus)

• The two main websites for you to use are Canvas (for course information) and Gradescope (for assign-
ment submission).

– Piazza and Khoury Office Hours websites are your main sources for help.
– See links to all four sites above.

• You may always email the professor to set up meetings outside of regularly scheduled office hours.

• You are expected to have a introductory level grasp of Python before starting the course. If you need to
review, there are some review materials on Canvas.

– All lab and homework assignments will be completed in Jupyter notebooks. The program you use
to open and edit the notebooks (Google Colab, VS Code, Cantor, or Jupyter Notebook itself) is up
to you, but you will always upload the raw .ipynb file to Gradescope as your submission.

• You must bring your laptop to every class. Additionally, make sure you bring a pen and paper!

• Start your homework early!!! We will not entertain any questions sent 6 hours before the deadline i.e., 6
PM onwards!

• Late homework will incur penality. Homework submitted more than 48 hours in advance will receive
extra credit.

• Grade Breakdown: Ethics Final Exam (5%), Labs (10%), Homework (40%), Midterm Exams (10%),
Final Project (35%)

• Please see Page 7 for important statements regarding Academic Integrity, Disability Access Services
(DAS) and other student resources, and Title IX information.

• Finally: I am here to support your learning. If you have any questions about how the rules outlined
in this syllabus are meant to do that, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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Class Meeting Times/Classroom:

• Section 4 (CRN: 37085): MR 11:45 am – 1:25 pm (HT 130)

Communication: Please check your email, Piazza, and Canvas regularly. Be aware that while attendance will
not be taken, it is the student’s responsibility to pay attention to/hear about announcements made in class.

Course Canvas Page: Canvas is your best friend for this course. All relevant information and assignments
will be posted here, and you can access both Gradescope and Piazza from this page, and also keep track of your
grades. Log in to Canvas at http://canvas.northeastern.edu and find our class; you should automatically
be added to the course.

Deadline Day E-mailing Policy: We including the TA’s would not be answering any emails regarding “help
with assignment,” 6 hours before the deadline of submission (i.e., 6 PM). START YOUR HOMEWORK
early!!! We cannot guarantee that we will be monitoring our email/Piazza that late at night; make sure you
give yourself enough time to ask for help on any assignment.

Office Hours: To facilitate your learning and engagement, your TAs will be holding both virtual and in-person
office hours (by request). This course will make use of the Khoury Office Hours App, which you will need a
Khoury account to access. The schedule for the Office Hours can be found at: https://officehours.khoury.
northeastern.edu/:

• Log on to the Khoury Office Hours App (link above).

• All TAs currently hosting hours will have set up a Queue, which you can join.

• When it is your turn to be assisted the TA will assist you.

If you want more help understanding how the Khoury Office Hours App works, there is also a Help Guide.

Additionally, I am more than happy to meet students who drop by my office, Meserve Hall 306A, on a first-come,
first-serve basis. While there is no strict schedule of availability for this, I am usually in the office:

• Monday and Thursday from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

You may also always email me, or ask after class, to set up a time for us to meet that works best for you.

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Prerequisites:

• CS 2510 or DS 2500 (strong background in programming assumed)

Description:
Data Science (DS) is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry concerned with the study and application of systemati-
cally extracting generalizable knowledge from data using mathematics, probability, and statistics, and using this
knowledge to draw useful conclusions. This course is an introductory DS class focusing on the foundations of DS.

The course introduces methods and concepts from linear algebra and probability that form a basis for modern
machine learning. Emphasizes computational aspects using the Python programming language (the course
assumes familiarity with Python). Students work with tensors (in NumPy) and may be tasked with imple-
menting from scratch algorithms central to numerical linear algebra and introductory machine learning. More
specifically, this class covers:

• understanding basic theoretical linear algebra as it pertains to machine learning

• working with applied linear algebra in standard numerical computing libraries (e.g. NumPy)

• loading, processing and integrating data from a variety of structured and unstructured sources using
Python libraries (e.g. pandas, BeautifulSoup)

• visualizing data using basic techniques and tools (e.g. matplotlib, seaborn, plotly)

• applying introductory concepts in probability, statistics, and machine learning using Python libraries (e.g.
scikit-learn)

• using a standard DS tool (e.g. Jupyter Notebook).

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Materials: The majority of class time will be spent writing and running computer code. Each student should
bring their laptop to each class and be prepared to submit in-class assignments, when they occur, at the
conclusion of the class.

Textbook and References: There is NO required textbook for this course. Material and lecture notes will
be posted and updated on Canvas every week. If you are interested in having a free textbook as a resource, the
below is quite useful:

• Python Data Science Handbook, by Jake VanderPlas.

https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/

• Linear Algebra, by Jim Hefferon.

https://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/

• Online Statistics: An Interactive Multimedia Course of Study, by David Lane.

https://onlinestatbook.com/index.html

Tentative Course Outline: There is a tentative schedule (updated as needed) on the Canvas page. This is
meant to give a rough idea of the topics covered over the course of the semester, and of tentative due dates,
but is by no means set in stone. In general, there are five main parts to the course:

• Part 1: Python and Online Data Collection (∼ 5 classes)

• Part 2: Data Cleaning and Basic Data Analysis (∼ 4 classes)

• Part 3: Introduction to Linear Algebra (∼ 5 classes)

• Part 4: Fundamental Machine Learning Techniques (∼ 4 classes)

• Part 5: More Advanced Machine Learning (∼ 4 classes)

Lectures: You are expected to attend every class period, if able. Be prepared to type and run code in
every class and to save your work. There will also be a section of the course that is rather math heavy; please
also bring pen and paper to take notes.

Lecture Notes: All Jupyter Notebooks and relevant in-class material will be posted to Canvas before each
class. These materials are meant to help you review, and catch-up should you miss a class. They are not a
replacement for attending class.

Push-up Promise: To encourage you to attend and pay attention, I will make a promise to you that has
worked out for all parties in the past. For every mistake YOU catch me make in lecture over the course of the
semester, I will do ONE push-up at the end of the last day of class. Every tally will occur only after one of
you points out a mistake I made (and after we discuss why/how I made the mistake). This not only gives you
an incentive to pay close attention in lecture, but gives me an incentive to limit my mistakes. Don’t be afraid
to point out my mistakes! We all make them, and it really does help learning! Also you can watch me struggle
amazingly to do that push-up, so added bonus!!! Last semester I did total 9 push-ups!!

Class Recordings: The class will be recorded via Zoom. You are expected to attend every class period,
if able.

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Ethics Activity, (5%): To facilitate your critical thinking about ethics of working with large datasets and
making machine learning models, there would be an Ethics Activity before the classes are officially over. It
will be a written activity done in groups of 2 to 3 where you will think critically about a prompt and think
about the ethical concerns related to it.

Labs (10%): We will occasionally practice concepts with small group work in-class. These labs are meant to
be low-stakes, and will be due at the end of the class day (by 11:59 pm) via Gradescope submission.

Homework (40%): There are four planned homework assignments (worth 10% each) that will typically be
assigned and due every three weeks, due Thursday by 11:59 pm. Assignments will be done through Grade-
scope, where solutions are provided via the rubric. These assignments will have several questions, some of which
will be relatively open-ended/project-like. Programming code requires thorough commenting, which must be
done independently. Students may submit regrade requests within 4 days of the grades being posted. After 4
days, if the student requests a regarde, there would be penalty of 50% for the first late date. Students may use
Office Hours to receive help on assignments, but under no circumstances will a TA (or the professor) do any part
of the assignment for you. If there is evidence that you directly copied answers from ANY source
including Chat GPT, you will receive a score of 0 for the assignment, and further instances of
academic misconduct will lead to disciplinary action. Please also see the student guide on Canvas for
working with AI tools.

Early/Late Homework: If you submit your homework/lab late, then we will grade it with a 30 points
deduction for the first late day, 50 point deduction for the second late day and you will get 0 if you submit
on the third late day. NOTE: The same policy will apply if you submit a wrong lab/homework. However,
students may receive 5% Extra Credit if their assignment is submitted more than 48 hours early: by
Tuesday at 11:59 pm.

Midterm Exams (10%): There will be two midterm exams, one coding take-home and one in-class math
which assess your understanding of the material. Each are low-stakes (5% each), and meant only to give the
professors a sense of what is working/not-working for you.

Final Project (35%): You will be required to conduct a final group project focusing on finding a large dataset
of interest, collecting, cleaning and analyzing the data with appropriate statistical techniques, and interpreting
the results in an appropriate manner. The following policies are in place to ensure an equitable share of effort
is done by all team members on the project:
• To be allowed to participate in the final group project, you must complete all of the assignments leading
up to when groups are assigned. This is to ensure that all groups are made up of active students. Any
student who has not completed all assignments due by the time of the project groups being formed will
receive a final project grade of 0.
• At the completion of the project, each group member will be asked to describe the contribution of all
other group members with a Statement of Contributions. With this information, the instructor may
adjust grades of individual group members, including failing students who have not made meaningful
contributions to the final project.
• There will be a presentation aspect of the project where each group member will be required to present
on something of substance.
• If there are life circumstances preventing your adequate participation in the group project, please reach
out to me as soon as possible. The earlier in the semester we’re aware of a situation, the more options we
have to put supports in place and remedy it.

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More details on the project will be shared after the first two weeks of the semester.

Total Grading Policy: Ethics Activity (5%), Labs (10%), Homework (40%), Midterm Exams (10%), Final
Project (35%).

There will be no curve in this class, and final grades will not be rounded. Letter grades are assigned according
to the thresholds met below (e.g. all grades 87 ≤ X < 90 receive a B+):

A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- D+ D D- F

93 90 87 83 80 77 73 70 67 63 60 0

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Important Tentative Dates (MR Section):

Project Assigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . January 27
Project Phase I Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 6
Project Groups Assigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 10
Coding Take-Home Exam Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 10
Project Phase II Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . February 27
Spring Break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 3 – 9
Math In-Class Exam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 10
Project Phase III Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . March 27
Ethics Final Exam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April 10
Final Project Due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . April 14

Academic Integrity: Under no circumstances may one student view or share their ungraded homework or
quiz with another student. Sharing or viewing another students ungraded work will result in a failing course
grade. This does not extend to discussion of concepts or ideas, but prohibits any sharing of personal code. Aca-
demic dishonesty is not tolerated and in addition to course failure, all violations will be reported to OSCCR:
https://osccr.sites.northeastern.edu/academic-integrity-policy/.

Like every computer scientist, you are encouraged to adapt your own code from code you find online, so long
as it was not written for this class in any semester. Doing so requires that you attribute credit to the source:

• a quick url link comment (e.g. stackoverflow) will suffice.

• please also see the student guide on Canvas for working with AI tools.

– any response to any problem on any assignment that is found to have been generated by AI (or copied
from any other source) will result in a zero for the entire assignment and the student will be immedi-
ately reported to OSCCR: https://osccr.sites.northeastern.edu/academic-integrity-policy/.

Disability Access Services (DAS): The office is available to assist students who have a legally documented
disability or students who suspect that they may have a disability. If you have a disabling condition that
may interfere with your ability to successfully complete this course, please contact Disability Access Services:
https://disabilityaccessservices.sites.northeastern.edu/.

Student Resources: Your health and wellness is more important than any assignment. Please use the
resources below if you are struggling, and don’t hesitate to ask for my help!

• Counseling Center (24/7 support): 877-233-9477 or https://www.northeastern.edu/uhcs/

Title IX: I am a mandatory reporter under Title IX, which means that I am required to report any and all
allegations of discrimination to the Title IX coordinator.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects individuals from sex or gender-based discrimination,
including discrimination based on gender-identity, in educational programs and activities that receive federal
financial assistance.

Northeastern’s Title IX Policy prohibits Prohibited Offenses, which are defined as sexual harassment, sexual
assault, relationship or domestic violence, and stalking. The Title IX Policy applies to the entire community,

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including male, female, transgender students, faculty and staff.

If you or someone you know has been a survivor of a Prohibited Offense, confidential support and guidance can
be found through University Health and Counseling Services staff and the Center for Spiritual Dialogue and
Service clergy members. By law, those employees are not required to report allegations of sex or gender-based
discrimination to the University.

Alleged violations can be reported non-confidentially to the Title IX Coordinator within The Office for Gender
Equity and Compliance at and/or through NUPD (Emergency 617-373-3333; Non-Emergency 617-373-2121).
Reporting Prohibited Offenses to NUPD does NOT commit the victim/affected party to future legal action.

Changes to Syllabus: This course syllabus is intended as a guide. The instructor reserves the right to revise
any part of the syllabus during the course. Any changes will be announced well in advance, during class time
and/or via email.

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Some “Encouragement” (via xkcd.com/844/ and xkcd.com/1838/):

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