Teaching Guide

How to Use These Slides

Each slide deck is designed for 50–75 minutes of classroom teaching. The decks follow the textbook chapter structure exactly, so students can read the corresponding chapter before or after class.

Speaker Notes

Every slide has speaker notes containing:

  • Timing guidance ([N min]) for pacing the lecture
  • Teaching tips for explaining difficult concepts
  • Common student errors to address proactively
  • Discussion prompts for engaging the class
  • Transition cues connecting each slide to the next

To view speaker notes in the PDF, use your PDF reader’s presenter mode. In the LaTeX source, notes appear as \note{...} commands on each frame.

Active Learning

Every deck includes 8–11 active learning moments, distributed across these types:

  • Predict: Students predict the outcome of a scenario before seeing the answer. Builds intuition about system behavior.
  • Exercise: A short calculation or analysis task (2–5 minutes). Often involves the Iron Law, roofline analysis, or memory estimation.
  • Discussion: Open-ended question for pair or group discussion (3–5 minutes). Explores trade-offs and design decisions.
  • Retrieval Practice: Students recall key concepts from earlier in the lecture or from previous chapters without looking at notes.
  • Muddiest Point: End-of-lecture check where students identify the concept they found most confusing.

These moments are marked with distinct frame titles and styling so they are easy to find in the deck.

Customizing the Slides

Source Format

The slides are Beamer LaTeX, not locked PDFs. The full source is open and designed for customization.

slides/
  assets/beamerthememlsys.sty   # Theme (colors, fonts, layout)
  vol1/<chapter>/
    <chapter>.tex               # Slide source
    images/                     # SVGs, photos, generated PDFs
  vol2/<chapter>/
    <chapter>.tex
    images/
  Makefile                      # Build system

Building

To build a single deck (PDF):

cd slides
make ch01            # Builds vol1/01_introduction PDF

To build everything (PDF):

make all

To build PowerPoint (PPTX) from PDFs:

make pptx-ch01       # Single chapter PPTX
make pptx-vol1       # All Vol1 PPTX
make pptx            # All PPTX (both volumes)

PPTX conversion requires poppler (brew install poppler on macOS, apt install poppler-utils on Ubuntu) and python-pptx + Pillow (pip install python-pptx Pillow). The PPTX files are image-based at 300 DPI — visually identical to the PDF, suitable for presenter mode and annotations, but not editable text.

Output goes to _build/vol1/ and _build/vol2/ (PDFs and PPTX side by side).

Editing Workflow

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Edit the .tex file for the chapter you want to change
  3. Rebuild with make chXX
  4. Review the PDF output in _build/

SVG Figures

All diagrams are authored as SVG files in each chapter’s images/ directory. SVGs are the source of truth; the build system converts them to PDF via Inkscape for embedding in Beamer.

To modify a diagram:

  1. Edit the .svg file in any vector editor (Inkscape, Illustrator, Figma)
  2. Follow the SVG style guide for colors and typography
  3. Rebuild the deck; the Makefile handles SVG-to-PDF conversion

Theme Customization

The file assets/beamerthememlsys.sty controls the global look:

  • Accent color: Deep Rose (#BE185D) used throughout
  • Header bar: Section navigation with centered labels
  • Footer: Book logo + chapter context (left), page number + institution (right)
  • Fonts: Metropolis base with custom overrides

Change the accent color or institution branding in the theme file and all decks update on rebuild.

Suggested Semester Plans

16-Week Plan: Volume I (Foundations)

Week Chapter Topic ~Time
1 0 Course Overview 53 min
2 1 Introduction 74 min
3 2 ML Systems 70 min
4 3 ML Workflow 79 min
5 4 Data Engineering 66 min
6 5 Neural Network Computation 68 min
7 6 Network Architectures 63 min
8 Midterm / Review
9 7 ML Frameworks 73 min
10 8 Model Training 68 min
11 9 Data Selection 63 min
12 10 Model Compression 64 min
13 11 Hardware Acceleration 66 min
14 12–13 Benchmarking + Model Serving 142 min
15 14–15 ML Ops + Responsible Engineering 130 min
16 16 Conclusion + Final Review 51 min

16-Week Plan: Volume II (At Scale)

Week Chapter Topic ~Time
1 0 Course Overview: ML Systems at Scale 49 min
2 1 Introduction 76 min
3 2 Compute Infrastructure 72 min
4 3 Network Fabrics 68 min
5 4 Data Storage 69 min
6 5 Distributed Training Systems 70 min
7 6 Collective Communication 64 min
8 Midterm / Review
9 7 Fault Tolerance and Reliability 68 min
10 8 Fleet Orchestration 74 min
11 9 Inference at Scale 71 min
12 10 Performance Engineering 72 min
13 11–12 Edge Intelligence + Ops at Scale 132 min
14 13–14 Security/Privacy + Robust AI 142 min
15 15–16 Sustainable AI + Responsible AI 131 min
16 17 Conclusion + Final Review 47 min

32-Week Combined Plan

For a two-semester sequence, teach Volume I in the first semester and Volume II in the second. Volume I provides the single-machine foundations that Volume II builds upon for distributed systems. The combined plan covers the full ML systems stack from data engineering on a single accelerator to fleet-scale governance.

Audio Lectures

Coming Soon: Audio Lectures Coming Soon

Each slide deck will have a companion audio lecture generated from the speaker notes written by the textbook author. These recordings will be:

  • Synchronized with the slide deck for self-paced playback
  • Based on author notes, not generic AI narration
  • Designed for flipped classrooms: students listen before class, class time is for active learning
  • Downloadable as MP3 for offline use
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