I’m an undergraduate student studying software engineering and mathematics. I am graduating in April and thought it’s best I take advantage of my last semester to figure out if I want to really go to grad school.

So I asked one of my professors if he could do an independent study with me in machine learning and he said I could either do research or a project. My semester is only 4 months long. Do you have any suggestion of what I can pick as a topic?

I took an intro to AI course with this professor where we mostly learned some of the history of AI and lisp. I didn’t feel like I learned much. I have a very naive idea about ML and I’m really interested in learning more about it. I’m really interesting in learning some of the theories and math behind it. Do any of you have any good book suggestions? Maybe my independent study could be based on a book? He’s a comp sci professor but he has has a math degree.

I’m also applying to applied math programs for grad school to learn the theory and applications of machine learning.