SP&E 486 - Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning

Ready or not, the future is here: more data has been generated in the last 3 years than all of previous human history combined while your smart phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. So what are you going to do about it? This course is a hands on, introduction to applied data analytics and visualization. Political, economic or business strategy drives which best practice theories, data, models and methods get implemented, turning insights into action for data driven decision making. Thus we will cover current state-of-art business intelligence, data analytics, predictive analytics and visualization techniques used across academia, industry and policy circles. We will survey and apply over 20 different methods and tools (including econometrics, big data, game theory, network analysis, social media, machine learning, sentiment analysis and data mining) to solve real world political, economic and business issues. Successful course completion will give you directly marketable and differentiable analytic and software skills in both academic research and private sector professions. The course can count as a methods class for across SPE MA and PhD fields.
Units: 4
Course Type: Seminar