Identifying Common Errors in Open-Ended Machine Learning Projects

Abstract

Machine learning (ML) is one of the fastest growing subfields in Computer Science, and it is important to identify ways to improve ML education. A key way to do so is by understanding the common errors that students make when writing ML programs, so they can be addressed. Prior work investigating ML errors has focused on an instructor perspective, but has not looked at student programming artifacts, such as projects and code submissions to understand how these errors occur and which are most common. To address this, we qualitatively coded over 2,500 cells of code from 19 final team projects (63 students) in an upper-division machine learning course. By isolating and codifying common errors and misconceptions across projects, we can identify what ML errors students struggle with. In our results, we found that library usage, hyperparameter tuning, and misusing test data were among the most common errors, and we give examples of how and when they occur. We then provide suggestions on why these misconceptions may occur, and how instructors and software designers can possibly mitigate these errors.

Publication
Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education