Author: Matthew Williams Start Date: January 2023 Project: Course Site Copyright: Attribution Only
See this project live at: http://mlcoursesite.wuaze.com/course-site/?i=1
The goal of this project is to be an introductory course to the topic of Machine Learning for the user. It is meant to provide lessons that explain a variety of topics, demonstrations that the user can utilize to see the algorithms working real-time within the webpage, and possibly more as the project matures.
Currently, the in-page Linear Regression model is done and the content of the lessons is being expanded and refined. Next steps would include making the Linear Regression demo more informational about what's going on, and look nicer within the lesson.
- Robust Log-In System: The user can create an account with an email and a password. The system uses cookies and session variables to ensure the user stays logged in if that's what they want. A Database is set up for storing their usernames and the salted hashes of their passwords. The missing feature from this system would be a way to recover the account in case of a lost password via an emailed link.
The "Construction" folder contains items not used in the page itself, but are utilized during development. This can include unused images, page templates, temporary JS files for testing, etc.
Within the "img" folder, there is a "lesson-img" folder that contains all the images used within lessons, and a "math" folder that contains all the math equations referenced. Any images directly inside of the "img" folder are general images used around the site.
The "php" folder has all the files that are primarily php utilities, functions, etc. While all the site pages are .php files, those inside of the "php" folder are not webpages themselves. The "handlers" sub-folder holds server-side scripts mainly used for logging in and out.
The "topic" folder is where all the lesson pages live. They are split into sub-folders depending on what lesson group they belong to, and each page is a lesson for one topic.
Any .php file in the root folder is a page in the general website, outside of the lessons. Note: There is an index.php file inside of each folder and sub-folder. With the exception of the root's index.php page, the rest are a "poor man's security" technique to redirect the user to the main index page as opposed to allowing them to browse the server files.
How big do I plan to make this site, or what all do I intend to add?
My general vision is that one day it'll have a solid set of lessons on the topics lined out in the file structure and information pages of the site. Ideally, any lesson based on a topic that could make for an interactive element would have one (model demo, sliders, visualizations, etc). My goal for the site is somewhere where people can come to learn the basics of ML, and come away not only with an intuitive sense for what happens behind the scenes, but also with any mathematical background that they come ready to receive. As I learned about ML myself, I was interested in the math and found that a better understanding of the calculus, statistics, linear algebra, etc greatly increased my understanding of the various ML models, and their abilities and limitations.