The course at a glance

A 11-session semester (11 × 180 min), worth 6 ECTS: one taught precourse session covering both precourse decks, then eight ISLP chapters taught in book order.

11 sessions × 180 min 6 ECTS 1 taught precourse session 9 ISLP chapters 3 + 5 practice exams

Semester plan

The precourse opens the semester as a taught session; the chapters follow in ISLP book order. The plan is keyed to chapter numbers, not session numbers — that is what the decks, the labs, the exercise numbering and the runsheets all refer to. The Sessions column says how many 180-minute slots each chapter needs.

Chapter

Sessions

Content

Exercises

Precourse — Ch 0 + Ch 0b

1

Taught in one session, drawing on both precourse decks: descriptive statistics; probability and Bayes; distributions; standard errors and confidence intervals; hypothesis testing; simple linear regression; the Python toolkit — and reading mathematical notation; logs and exponentials; odds, the logit and the sigmoid; likelihood; counting and computational cost (with a lab notebook each)

0.1–0.10, 0b.1–0b.6

Ch 1

½

Introduction; prediction vs. inference; the three motivating data sets

1.1–1.3

Ch 2

1½

What is statistical learning; parametric vs. non-parametric; assessing accuracy; the bias–variance trade-off; the Bayes classifier and KNN; lab

2.1–2.8

Ch 3

2

Simple & multiple linear regression; estimation; inference (SE, t, F); qualitative predictors; interactions; diagnostics; KNN vs. OLS; lab

3.1–3.12

Ch 4

2

Logistic regression; odds; multiple logistic regression; confounding; the confusion matrix; ROC/AUC; lab — the generative models (LDA, QDA, naive Bayes) are appendix material

4.1–4.10

Ch 5

1

Validation set, LOOCV, k-fold CV, the bootstrap

5.1–5.6

Ch 6

1

Subset selection; Cₚ/AIC/BIC; ridge; lasso; PCR/PLS

6.1–6.6

Ch 7

1

Polynomials, step functions, splines, smoothing splines, GAMs

7.1–7.6

Ch 8

1

Decision trees; bagging & OOB; random forests; boosting

8.1–8.7

Chapter 1 is short and opens the same session as the first half of Chapter 2.

Split chapters

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 each span two sessions. The recommended stopping points let you stop and resume cleanly:

  • Ch 2 — after “regression vs. classification” (p. 41); assessing accuracy, bias–variance and KNN open the second session

  • Ch 3 — after multiple regression and the four questions (p. 79)

  • Ch 4 — after the logistic-regression section (p. 46); the confusion matrix, ROC/AUC and the lab open the second session

One session, two decks — so it is a selection

The two precourse decks carry 166 slides in their main flow (113 + 53). A single 180-minute session cannot cover them, and is not meant to: the session sets up the notation, the standard-error material and the Python patterns the chapters lean on hardest, and both decks stay available in full as the reference. The tools for closing the rest yourself are built in — the twelve-question self-check on page 8 of chapter_00.pdf and the notation table on page 5 of chapter_00b.pdf — see For students.

Five chapters sit outside the taught plan

Chapters 9 (Support Vector Machines), 10 (Deep Learning), 11 (Survival Analysis), 12 (Unsupervised Learning) and 13 (Multiple Testing) are no longer taught in the sequence. Each keeps its full deck and its lab, now as a self-study advanced module — A5, A9, A6, A8 and A7 respectively — under Chapters/Advanced/. The remaining eight chapters run in book order, so nothing else moved.

The mock exams were not rewritten: the final papers and Short Exam E still carry a multiple-testing problem, which now draws on module A7 rather than on a taught session, and any unsupervised-learning question now draws on module A8.

Assessment

The module is worth 6 ECTS and is graded by a single written exam at the end of the semester — 120 minutes, 100% of the mark. The Final Mock Exam is built as the rehearsal for that paper: same length, same structure, weighted to Chapters 7, 8, 10 and 13 — the last of which is now the self-study module A7. Any unsupervised-learning question draws on module A8, for the same reason.

Practice rhythm

Everything below is practice, not assessment — eight papers matched to the calendar so students can self-test at the natural checkpoints, none of which counts towards the grade. See Mock exams; none is distributed with this repository.

Each deck also carries far more exercises than a session can run: the runsheets name the two to four worth live time and leave the rest as homework.

Paper

Checkpoint

Covers

Length

Mock Exam 1

after Ch 3

Chapters 1–3

90 min · 90 pts

Short Exam A

after Ch 4

Ch 0 + 1–2, Ch 3, Ch 4

60 min · 60 pts

Short Exam B

after Ch 5

Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 5

60 min · 60 pts

Mock Exam 2

after Ch 6

Chapters 4–6 (+ light cumulative)

90 min · 90 pts

Short Exam C

after Ch 6

Ch 0 + 0b, Ch 3, Ch 6

60 min · 60 pts

Short Exam D

after Ch 8

Ch 2 + 5, Ch 2 + 4, Ch 8

60 min · 60 pts

Final Mock Exam

after Ch 8

All chapters (weighted to Ch 7/8 and modules A9 and A7)

120 min · 120 pts

Short Exam E

after Ch 8

Ch 0, Ch 5 + 7, Ch 13 (module A7)

60 min · 60 pts

The three mock exams are the full-length rehearsals; the five 60-minute short exams are the formative layer, and the bold chapter is where each one’s hardest problem sits — which is why they are released in order, not all at once.

Where to go next