Start of School - Sep 12 Journal


Through these several weeks, we have begun our journey to exploring research in machine learning by starting our paper airplane research project, hearing undergraduate research presentations, and learning the foundations of machine learning and the basic principles of research. 

Foundations:
Our first several weeks covered the foundations of research and more specifically machine learning. In a class activity, all the groups came up with several truths about research and the class was able to collectively develop a set of rules and expectations for the research journey. From "always keep on trying" to "look to nature for inspiration," many of these truths resounded with me as I hope to learn more about this field via research in this course. 


The foundations of machine learning were also covered through a series of videos. From explaining neural networks to linear regression, these videos established a baseline from which my group and I could work off from. We all have different levels of expertise and knowledge about the field (for example several group mates and I had to go through some chapters of Python) so it is very helpful that we are closing the knowledge gap to ensure better collaboration. The videos also recounted how machine learning has weathered several challenging time periods, highlighting the importance of maximizing our research in this lucky age of interest in AI and machine learning. Through the Concept Maps, I was also able to learn more deeply about Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform.



 Undergrad Presentations:
 One of the key highlights of these past weeks was our Caltech field trip to watch presentations by the SURF program. This program was a summer research opportunity for undergraduate students at Caltech and I was amazed at the complexity of their work. One talked about different methods of machine learning and others used data collection to create an algorithm for optimizing electric car charging. The SURF presentations also revealed the many different applications of machine learning to other fields and served as a role model for what my group and I would be aiming for this year through our research.


Paper Airplanes:
The class project for this semester was introduced to be the paper airplane project where I would research anything I wanted about paper airplanes. Partnering with Elizabeth, I really enjoyed the freedom of research and the curiosity driven nature of the project. We selected the goal of optimizing plane efficiency to create the most sustainable plane design. I had a lot of fun building the planes and being able to test them out in all sorts of ways. It really opened up the class more so that I would have the chance to work with the machine learning group but other classmates as well.

That's all for this entry! See you next week!



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