*This network is running live in your browser
The Convolutional Neural Network in this example is classifying images live in your browser using Javascript, at about 10 milliseconds per image. It takes an input image and transforms it through a series of functions into class probabilities at the end. The transformed representations in this visualization can be losely thought of as the activations of the neurons along the way. The parameters of this function are learned with backpropagation on a dataset of (image, label) pairs. This particular network is classifying CIFAR-10 images into one of 10 classes and was trained with ConvNetJS. Its exact architecture is [conv-relu-conv-relu-pool]x3-fc-softmax, for a total of 17 layers and 7000 parameters. It uses 3x3 convolutions and 2x2 pooling regions. By the end of the class, you will know exactly what all these numbers mean.

Course Description

Computer Vision has become ubiquitous in our society, with applications in search, image understanding, apps, mapping, medicine, drones, and self-driving cars. Core to many of these applications are visual recognition tasks such as image classification, localization and detection. Recent developments in neural network (aka “deep learning”) approaches have greatly advanced the performance of these state-of-the-art visual recognition systems. This course is a deep dive into details of the deep learning architectures with a focus on learning end-to-end models for these tasks, particularly image classification. During the 10-week course, students will learn to implement, train and debug their own neural networks and gain a detailed understanding of cutting-edge research in computer vision. The final assignment will involve training a multi-million parameter convolutional neural network and applying it on the largest image classification dataset (ImageNet). We will focus on teaching how to set up the problem of image recognition, the learning algorithms (e.g. backpropagation), practical engineering tricks for training and fine-tuning the networks and guide the students through hands-on assignments and a final course project. Much of the background and materials of this course will be drawn from the ImageNet Challenge.

Class Time and Location

Spring quarter (April - June, 2017).
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday 12pm-1:20pm
NVIDIA Auditorium, Huang Engineering Center (map)

Office Hours

You can find a full list of times and locations on the calendar.

Grading Policy

Assignment #1: 15%
Assignment #2: 15%
Assignment #3: 15%
Midterm: 15%
Final Project: 40%

Course Discussions

Stanford students: Piazza
Our Twitter account: @cs231n

Assignment Details

See the Assignment Page for more details on how to hand in your assignments.

Course Project Details

See the Project Page for more details on the course project.

Prerequisites

FAQ

Is this the first time this class is offered?
This course was previously taught in Winter 2015 and Winter 2016. This year's version of the course has been tweaked and updated to include new material where appropriate. The class is designed to introduce students to deep learning in context of Computer Vision. We will place a particular emphasis on Convolutional Neural Networks, which are a class of deep learning models that have recently given dramatic improvements in various visual recognition tasks. You can read more about it in this recent New York Times article.
Can I take this course on credit/no cred basis?
Yes. Credit will be given to those who would have otherwise earned a C- or above.
Can I audit or sit in?
In general we are very open to sitting-in guests if you are a member of the Stanford community (registered student, staff, and/or faculty). Out of courtesy, we would appreciate that you first email us or talk to the instructor after the first class you attend. If the class is too full and we're running out of space, we would ask that you please allow registered students to attend.
Can I work in groups for the Final Project?
Yes, in groups of up to three people.
I have a question about the class. What is the best way to reach the course staff?
Stanford students please use an internal class forum on Piazza so that other students may benefit from your questions and our answers. If you have a personal matter, email us at the class mailing list cs231n-spring1617-staff@lists.stanford.edu.
Can I combine the Final Project with another course?
Yes, you may. There are a couple of courses concurrently offered with CS231n that are natural choices, such as CS231a (Computer Vision, by Prof. Silvio Savarese). Speak to the instructors if you want to combine your final project with another course.