# What is STEP?

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## STEP = study through exploration and presentation

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Halfway through the course, you’ll choose an aspect of machine learning that sparks your curiosity and investigate it.  

The STEP has three goals:

````{margin}
<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><sup>*</sup> Reference to comedian Tim Minchin's address at University of Western Australia; [9 Life Lessons - Six: Be a Teacher! (YouTube)](https://youtu.be/yoEezZD71sc?t=512)
````
1. __Deepen your knowledge__
<br> Your own questions will be your guidance. Choose what you most want to grasp and build intuition around.  
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1. __Get hands-on__
<br> Design a small coding demo to highlight your main results. A Jupyter notebook is very pedagogical, but the output format is totally free... as long as it validates the goal 3.  
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1. __Nail a crystal-clear presentation that effortlessly sparks understanding of your peers__
<br> In other words: Be a Teacher!<sup>*</sup> The STEP is a pretext to sharpen your didactical skills, and to train yourself toward becoming an outstanding speaker. Think of how many opportunities open if you are an excellent communicator. Direct bonus: this will give you a confidence boost that lasts.

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```{admonition} Group size
:class: warning
For the STEP, you can work in groups of 2 or 3. Exceptions can be made if you want to be solo or in a group of 4 (case of an ambitious STEP where workload can be easily divided). This will have to be validated by the instructor.
```
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The presentations will happen during the last lecture (with double the time to fit all groups).  
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````{margin}
<br><br><br><sup>*</sup> Remember to have fun. Always.
````
```{admonition} Two constraints
:class: important
1. The final presentation should be __10 minutes__ long.
1. Throughout the process, you must maximize the __fun function__.

```



## The list

The next section lists some STEPs for you perusal. If you want to submit your own idea, please go to the Section {ref}`submit_own_step`