"Forgetting" in Machine Learning and Beyond: A Survey

This survey investigates the multifaceted nature of forgetting in machine learning, drawing insights from neuroscientific research that posits forgetting as an adaptive function rather than a defect, enhancing the learning process and preventing overfitting. This survey focuses on the benefits of forgetting and its applications across various machine learning sub-fields that can help improve model performance and enhance data privacy. Moreover, the paper discusses current challenges, future directions, and ethical considerations regarding the integration of forgetting mechanisms into machine learning models.

Knowledge Tracing: A Survey

Humans ability to transfer knowledge through teaching is one of the essential aspects for human intelligence. A human teacher can track the knowledge of students to customize the teaching on students needs. With the rise of online education platforms, there is a similar need for machines to track the knowledge of students and tailor their learning experience. This is known as the Knowledge Tracing (KT) problem in the literature. Effectively solving the KT problem would unlock the potential of computer-aided education applications such as intelligent tutoring systems, curriculum learning, and learning materials' recommendation. Moreover, from a more general viewpoint, a student may represent any kind of intelligent agents including both human and artificial agents. Thus, the potential of KT can be extended to any machine teaching application scenarios which seek for customizing the learning experience for a student agent (i.e., a machine learning model). In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and systematic review for the KT literature. We cover a broad range of methods starting from the early attempts to the recent state-of-the-art methods using deep learning, while highlighting the theoretical aspects of models and the characteristics of benchmark datasets. Besides these, we shed light on key modelling differences between closely related methods and summarize them in an easy-to-understand format. Finally, we discuss current research gaps in the KT literature and possible future research and application directions.