What this course is: a survey of elementary machine learning methods that mostly aren't the current state of practice with. You'll code some short implementations, write some proofs, and do a project which involves writing a report and a full model implementation. If you are completely new to machine learning, I'd recommend this course. If you've been doing machine learning for a few years, and want to become more proficient with current methodologies like deep learning or gradient boosting machines, don't take this course.