Get the code as a zip file here.

Setup

Please familiarize yourself with the recommended workflow before starting the assignment. You should also watch the Colab walkthrough tutorial below.

The assignment would be using Python = 3.6

Note. Ensure you are periodically saving your notebook (File -> Save) so that you don’t lose your progress if you step away from the assignment and the Colab VM disconnects.

Once you have completed all Colab notebooks except collect_submission.ipynb, proceed to the submission instructions.

Download data: Once you have the starter code, you will need to download the CIFAR-10 dataset. Run the following from the assignment1 directory:

cd datasets
./get_datasets.sh

Start Jupyter Notebook: After you have the CIFAR-10 data, you should start the Jupyter Notebook server from the assignment1 directory. If you are unfamiliar with Jupyter, you should read our Jupyter tutorial.

NOTE: If you are working in a virtual environment on OSX, you may encounter errors with matplotlib due to the issues described here. You can work around this issue by starting the Jupyter server using the start_jupyter_osx.sh script from the assignment1 directory; the script assumes that your virtual environment is named .env.

Goals

In this assignment you will practice putting together a simple image classification pipeline, based on the k-Nearest Neighbor or the SVM/Softmax classifier. The goals of this assignment are as follows:

  • understand the basic Image Classification pipeline and the data-driven approach (train/predict stages)
  • understand the train/val/test splits and the use of validation data for hyperparameter tuning.
  • develop proficiency in writing efficient vectorized code with numpy
  • implement and apply a k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) classifier
  • implement and apply a Multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier
  • implement and apply a Softmax classifier
  • implement and apply a Two layer neural network classifier
  • understand the differences and tradeoffs between these classifiers
  • get a basic understanding of performance improvements from using higher-level representations than raw pixels (e.g. color histograms, Histogram of Gradient (HOG) features)

Q1: k-Nearest Neighbor classifier (20 points)

The Jupyter Notebook knn.ipynb will walk you through implementing the kNN classifier.

Q2: Training a Support Vector Machine (25 points)

The Jupyter Notebook svm.ipynb will walk you through implementing the SVM classifier.

Q3: Implement a Softmax classifier (20 points)

The Jupyter Notebook softmax.ipynb will walk you through implementing the Softmax classifier.

Q4: Two-Layer Neural Network (25 points)

The Jupyter Notebook two_layer_net.ipynb will walk you through the implementation of a two-layer neural network classifier.

Q5: Higher Level Representations: Image Features (10 points)

The Jupyter Notebook features.ipynb will walk you through this exercise, in which you will examine the improvements gained by using higher-level representations as opposed to using raw pixel values.

Submitting your work

Important. Please make sure that the submitted notebooks have been run and the cell outputs are visible.

Once you have completed all notebooks and filled out the necessary code, you need to follow the below instructions to submit your work:

To make sure everything is working properly, remember to do a clean run (“Kernel -> Restart & Run All”) after you finish work for each notebook and submit the final version with all the outputs.

1. Generate a zip file of your code (.py and .ipynb) called <UmassID>.zip (For email address arnaik@umass.edu - zip file name is arnaik.zip). Please ensure you donot include the dataset folder in the zip.

2. Convert all notebooks (.ipynb files) into a single PDF file.

3. Please submit .zip and the pdf to Gradescope.

If you run code on your local machine on Linux or macOS, you can run the provided collectSubmission.sh script from assignment1/ to produce a file <UmassID>.zip.