Intro to Machine Learning for Hackers

Description

The course by the esteemed Mike Bowles is designed as an introduction to machine learning for computer programmers of all backgrounds.

This course has several objectives:

1. Teach basic concepts behind major machine learning algorithms
2. Give basic instruction on using R programming language
3. Run through "hackable" R-code examples for major algorithms
4. Give participants in-class hands-on exercises to cement understanding

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Agenda
9:30AM - Doors Open
10AM - Introduction to Machine Learning Part 1
12PM - Catered Lunch
1PM - Introduction to Machine Learning Part 2
4PM - Drinks and Networking
6PM - Doors Close and walk to optional Ruby On Rails Event at Plum District starting at 6:30pm.

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Course Overview

The class is aimed at computer programmers, computer scientists and software engineers who want to gain a working knowledge of modern machine learning and the types of problems that it can solve. Class sessions will rely heavily on code examples in R statistical programming language. Participants aren't expected to have any prior experience with R. An introduction to R will be includedin the material. The material will cover an introduction to R statistical programming language, unsupervised learning (clustering) and supervised learning (predicting classification and regression – alsocalled "predictive analytics").

To get the most out of the course, you'll need several things. First, you should have programming experience so that you're familiar with basic programming constructs, control structures, etc.

Second, you'll need basic undergraduate level math and statistics as background. The course won't go through detailed derivation, but will teach concepts through programming examples. Third, you'll want to install a current version of R on your laptop and bring it to class so you can run the examples and do the exercises in class.

Besides going through an introduction to R, you'll get background on machine learning methods – data variable types, data visualization, how to avoid over-fitting, etc. You'll also get to use some of the best machine learning algorithms currently in use.

Some of the machine learning algorithms we'll cover will include:

- k means clustering
- k nearest neighbors
- regularized regression (for regression and classification)
- binary trees- support vector machines- ensemble methods (random forests and gradient boosting)

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Who is Mike Bowles

Mike Bowles is an experienced developer of statistically-driven fully automated quantitative trading systems. His formal education is in signal processing for finance and business. He has solid research and development experience as entrepreneur, manager and sole contributor with excellent communications skills.

Mike was the first holder of the Draper Chair at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught graduate courses at MIT in control and estimation theory. While at MIT he also did research work in non-linear filtering and studied mathematics, stochastic processes.

He currently teaches a series of data mining classes to working professionals at Hacker Dojo. He also currently trades in equities and equity-based derivatives by combining traditional trading methods with data-mining and statistical approaches SSA, neural nets, regime switching, Kalman SVM, regression trees and more.

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Sponsors
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DevBootCamp

Dev Bootcamp is not a typical classroom. Think of it more as apprenticeship or a workshop intensive. You will be learning by doing and building, not just by sitting back and listening. We set up bootcamp to closely resemble an real work environment.
Dev BootCamp holds intensive 10 week Ruby on Rails training courses that can be found at http://devbootcamp.com/

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O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly Media is dedicated to educating the public about technology and they provide BASE with book giveaways for our members.

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Become Noticed

Become Noticed is a San Francisco SEO Company that focuses on best practices and engaging the latest Web technologies to build strong Web strate . gies for clients. State of the art design, HTML5 technologies, social media engagement and application development help Become Noticed stand out as an all around Web strategy company for San Francisco and beyond. Become Noticed, Inc. sponsors the Bay Area Software Engineers (BASE) group with financial and promotional support.

More Info

Link

http://mlcourse.eventbrite.com/

Call

6503157106 (Box Office)

Email

Contact Form (account required)