Teaching AFM/ACTSC 423 was an exciting and challenging experience for me. The course introduced me to a new world where finance, data analysis, and machine learning come together. Entering this rapidly evolving field was both stressful and energizing: there was always more to learn, but that was also what made teaching the course so rewarding.

One of the most important lessons I learned was that teaching machine learning requires continuous learning. The methods, tools, and applications in this area develop very quickly. While preparing and teaching the course, I needed to keep updating my own knowledge, exploring new resources, and thinking carefully about how recent developments could be connected to the fundamental ideas students needed to understand.

My goal was to make the course more than a collection of algorithms. We began with financial questions and then examined how data and machine learning could help us investigate them. Students worked with real financial data and used R and Python to explore models such as regularized regression, decision trees, random forests, and gradient boosting. Throughout the course, I emphasized that building a model is only one part of the process. We also need to ask whether the data are appropriate, whether the model is being evaluated properly, and whether its results make sense in a financial context.

I also wanted students to understand the difference between a model that fits historical data well and a model that can be useful for future decisions. In finance, this distinction is especially important because markets change, relationships are unstable, and a model can easily capture noise instead of a meaningful pattern. For this reason, we discussed issues such as overfitting, out-of-sample evaluation, model interpretation, and the limitations of data-driven predictions.

Overall, teaching AFM/ACTSC 423 changed the way I think about both teaching and learning. It reminded me that an instructor does not need to stand still in a field that is constantly moving. Instead, teaching can be a process of staying curious, learning continuously, and helping students develop the judgment to use powerful tools responsibly. The experience was demanding, but it also opened a new and exciting direction in my teaching and professional growth.