DS 5230 — Unsupervised Machine Learning and Data Mining
4 semester hoursGraduateLectureNUpath CENUpath WIusually offered: fall, springArlington, VABostonPortland, MaineSilicon Valley, CALive CastTraditional
Introduces unsupervised machine learning and data mining, which is the process of discovering and summarizing patterns from large amounts of data, without examples of data with a known outcome of interest. Offers a broad view of models and algorithms for unsupervised data exploration. Discusses the methodological foundations behind the models and the algorithms, as well as issues of practical implementation and use, and techniques for assessing the performance. Includes a term project involving programming and/or work with real-life data sets. Requires proficiency in a programming language such as Python, R, or MATLAB.
Offering history
| Term | Sections | Enrolled | Capacity | Full | Open seats/section |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2023 | 2 | 90 | 140 | 64% | 25.0 |
| Spring 2024 | 5 | 146 | 232 | 63% | 17.2 |
| Fall 2024 | 4 | 93 | 189 | 49% | 24.0 |
| Spring 2025 | 4 | 142 | 194 | 73% | 13.0 |
| Fall 2025 | 3 | 28 | 62 | 45% | 11.3 |
| Spring 2026 | 2 | 43 | 44 | 98% | 0.5 |
Snapshots from scheduled scrapes — not live seat availability. "Full" can exceed 100% when sections over-enroll.
Meeting times
Share of recent sections by weekday: M 29% · T 49% · W 37% · Th 22% · F 5%
Common patterns: T (42% of sections), W (13% of sections), MWR (12% of sections), MW (12% of sections), R (9% of sections), M (6% of sections) — in patterns, R means Thursday
Professors
Fall
- David Brady (65% of students) · reviews
- Roi Yehoshua (15% of students) · reviews
- Jonathan Mwaura (10% of students) · reviews
- Nadim Saad (4% of students) · reviews
Spring
- Virgil Pavlu (51% of students) · reviews
- Steve Schmidt (19% of students) · reviews
- Ryan Bockmon (13% of students) · reviews
- Jonathan Mwaura (8% of students) · reviews
Percentages are each professor's average share of the season's enrolled students in recent terms.
Unlocks
Courses that list DS 5230 in their prerequisites.
Links
Official catalog (DS course descriptions) · Student reviews on RateMyHusky · All DS courses · Plan it at numap.app