One of the most common tasks performed by data scientists and data analysts are prediction and machine learning. This course will cover the basic components of building and applying prediction functions with an emphasis on practical applications. The course will provide basic grounding in concepts such as training and tests sets, overfitting, and error rates. The course will also introduce a range of model based and algorithmic machine learning methods including regression, classification trees, Naive Bayes, and random forests. The course will cover the complete process of building prediction functions including data collection, feature creation, algorithms, and evaluation.
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Practical Machine Learning
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Found in
Machine Learning,
Artificial Intelligence
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- Provider Coursera
- Cost Free Online Course (Audit)
- Session In progress
- Language English
- Certificate Paid Certificate Available
- Effort 4-9 hours a week
- Start Date
- Duration 4 weeks long
- Learn more about MOOCs
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Overview
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Syllabus
Week 1: Prediction, Errors, and Cross Validation
-This week will cover prediction, relative importance of steps, errors, and cross validation.
Week 2: The Caret Package
-This week will introduce the caret package, tools for creating features and preprocessing.
Week 3: Predicting with trees, Random Forests, & Model Based Predictions
-This week we introduce a number of machine learning algorithms you can use to complete your course project.
Week 4: Regularized Regression and Combining Predictors
-This week, we will cover regularized regression and combining predictors.
-This week will cover prediction, relative importance of steps, errors, and cross validation.
Week 2: The Caret Package
-This week will introduce the caret package, tools for creating features and preprocessing.
Week 3: Predicting with trees, Random Forests, & Model Based Predictions
-This week we introduce a number of machine learning algorithms you can use to complete your course project.
Week 4: Regularized Regression and Combining Predictors
-This week, we will cover regularized regression and combining predictors.
Taught by
Jeff Leek
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Reviews
for Coursera's Practical Machine Learning
Based on
26 reviews
- 5 stars 15%
- 4 stars 38%
- 3 stars 27%
- 2 stars 12%
- 1 stars 8%
Did you take this course? Share your experience with other students.
Write a review- 1
Anonymous
4 years ago
completed this course.
This course sucks. This is about machine learning. not about students learning. students don't learn anything with this course. apart from typing a one-liner code and pressing return.
This was supposed to be the last course of their data analytics specialization program. There is very little mathematical explanations, proofs, and the whole thing lacks a lot of rigour.
Worse, the data in the final data assignment has a lot of flaws, the provided testing data was actually (almost) a subset of the training data. Some people also figured out there were mistakes in the pro…
This was supposed to be the last course of their data analytics specialization program. There is very little mathematical explanations, proofs, and the whole thing lacks a lot of rigour.
Worse, the data in the final data assignment has a lot of flaws, the provided testing data was actually (almost) a subset of the training data. Some people also figured out there were mistakes in the pro…
This course sucks. This is about machine learning. not about students learning. students don't learn anything with this course. apart from typing a one-liner code and pressing return.
This was supposed to be the last course of their data analytics specialization program. There is very little mathematical explanations, proofs, and the whole thing lacks a lot of rigour.
Worse, the data in the final data assignment has a lot of flaws, the provided testing data was actually (almost) a subset of the training data. Some people also figured out there were mistakes in the protocol leading to the data, with some instruments not being reset, and identifying indirectly the subjects. etc...
in one word, the data was garbage. garbage in garbage out.
But, when correcting other people's work for peer-grading, of course, I found out almost NO student was able to figure out that by himself, not having done enough exploratory data exploration and not expressing enough judgment. That was not so difficult in this case, but students wrote a few line of codes and were happy with it.
I don't think 99% of people are stupid. it just reflects the fact that the material was very badly taught, and despite messages on the forum, there was no one on the staff willing to deal with the problem in time, not even a word from them, whereas people actually PAID money to follow this course.
the lectures are a bit messy. in 4 weeks they want to present a lot and lot of algos but with so little time, students get only a glimpse of the ideas behind it, and finally all they learn is to type a code in R like
train( , method="xxx") and know the available methods "xxx" available.
and just print the results, without learning to interpret anything or make sense of anything.
I'd say go away from JH courses, there are much better courses around. if they're not available, you can still try them for free. but be aware that you'll have only a very superficial and "practical" only
This was supposed to be the last course of their data analytics specialization program. There is very little mathematical explanations, proofs, and the whole thing lacks a lot of rigour.
Worse, the data in the final data assignment has a lot of flaws, the provided testing data was actually (almost) a subset of the training data. Some people also figured out there were mistakes in the protocol leading to the data, with some instruments not being reset, and identifying indirectly the subjects. etc...
in one word, the data was garbage. garbage in garbage out.
But, when correcting other people's work for peer-grading, of course, I found out almost NO student was able to figure out that by himself, not having done enough exploratory data exploration and not expressing enough judgment. That was not so difficult in this case, but students wrote a few line of codes and were happy with it.
I don't think 99% of people are stupid. it just reflects the fact that the material was very badly taught, and despite messages on the forum, there was no one on the staff willing to deal with the problem in time, not even a word from them, whereas people actually PAID money to follow this course.
the lectures are a bit messy. in 4 weeks they want to present a lot and lot of algos but with so little time, students get only a glimpse of the ideas behind it, and finally all they learn is to type a code in R like
train( , method="xxx") and know the available methods "xxx" available.
and just print the results, without learning to interpret anything or make sense of anything.
I'd say go away from JH courses, there are much better courses around. if they're not available, you can still try them for free. but be aware that you'll have only a very superficial and "practical" only
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Juan D
5 years ago
completed this course, spending 5 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.
The name says everything, is just practical, none of the topics is treated in deep. And assumes that you have made almost all the other courses in the specialization.
There is a pronounced down in the quality of the weeks, the week 1 is good enough, and the week 4 just sucks. And the professors seems being hurried up in the videos.
However, can help as a very short introduction to a more in deep course.
There is a pronounced down in the quality of the weeks, the week 1 is good enough, and the week 4 just sucks. And the professors seems being hurried up in the videos.
However, can help as a very short introduction to a more in deep course.
7
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this review helpful
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L B
4 years ago
completed this course, spending 7 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be hard.
This is good introduction to ML. The course demonstrate the practical application of ML, but due to short duration, it does not explain concepts in depth and it does glance over more complex parameters.
If you like to learn how to programme ML in R, have good experience with statistics and programming, and are happy with doing additional studies, I would recommend this course. For more in-depth knowledge I recommend Andrew Ng courese.
If you like to learn how to programme ML in R, have good experience with statistics and programming, and are happy with doing additional studies, I would recommend this course. For more in-depth knowledge I recommend Andrew Ng courese.
1
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Brandt P
3 years ago
This is the second-to-last course in the Data Science specialization from Johns Hopkins, and the final of three courses covering actual data analysis techniques (preceded by Statistical Inference and Regression Models).
This was one of the better courses in the series, and I thought it lived up to it's name. This was certainly a practical overview of machine learning techniques. There was very little discussion of the algorithms behind these techniques, certainly much less than even in Andrew Ng's Coursera course, which is itself supposedly fairly watered-down compared to many…
This was one of the better courses in the series, and I thought it lived up to it's name. This was certainly a practical overview of machine learning techniques. There was very little discussion of the algorithms behind these techniques, certainly much less than even in Andrew Ng's Coursera course, which is itself supposedly fairly watered-down compared to many…
This is the second-to-last course in the Data Science specialization from Johns Hopkins, and the final of three courses covering actual data analysis techniques (preceded by Statistical Inference and Regression Models).
This was one of the better courses in the series, and I thought it lived up to it's name. This was certainly a practical overview of machine learning techniques. There was very little discussion of the algorithms behind these techniques, certainly much less than even in Andrew Ng's Coursera course, which is itself supposedly fairly watered-down compared to many university courses on the subject.
I was taking Analytics Edge on EdX at the same time as this (and still am, actually, at the time of this writing), and I found them to be fairly similar in depth in areas where they overlapped (e.g. random forests). PML also covered boosting, bagging, and regularized regression among other things. The final project I thought was fairly easy, and my random forest-based model correctly predicted all 20 test cases on the first try.
Overall, four stars. This is a nice overview course if your goal is to understand a bit about how to implement machine learning procedures in R. You won't gain much of a deep understanding of these techniques from this course, but it's enough to get you started.
This was one of the better courses in the series, and I thought it lived up to it's name. This was certainly a practical overview of machine learning techniques. There was very little discussion of the algorithms behind these techniques, certainly much less than even in Andrew Ng's Coursera course, which is itself supposedly fairly watered-down compared to many university courses on the subject.
I was taking Analytics Edge on EdX at the same time as this (and still am, actually, at the time of this writing), and I found them to be fairly similar in depth in areas where they overlapped (e.g. random forests). PML also covered boosting, bagging, and regularized regression among other things. The final project I thought was fairly easy, and my random forest-based model correctly predicted all 20 test cases on the first try.
Overall, four stars. This is a nice overview course if your goal is to understand a bit about how to implement machine learning procedures in R. You won't gain much of a deep understanding of these techniques from this course, but it's enough to get you started.
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Jason C
4 years ago
by
completed this course, spending 2 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.
Of all the JHU Data Science specialization courses I've had, this was by far the most enjoyable. I really liked how the class was more in the style of 'here's some techniques, now do whatever you want on the project.' Prior courses are, and understandably so, more constrained in the assignments. It's not until here that the student really has the tools to be able to flex their analytical muscles, and it pays off.
Also, of the three instructors, I am most favorable to Jeff Leek, who teaches this class. He communicates much clearer than Roger Peng or Brian Caffo. I find I learn more from his content than the others.
Lastly, I will say that this class doesn't hold a torch to University of Washington's Machine Learning specialization. That's expected since this is one class and that's a whole series of classes. If you're hungry for more after this one, I highly recommend UWash's Machine Learning specialization.
Also, of the three instructors, I am most favorable to Jeff Leek, who teaches this class. He communicates much clearer than Roger Peng or Brian Caffo. I find I learn more from his content than the others.
Lastly, I will say that this class doesn't hold a torch to University of Washington's Machine Learning specialization. That's expected since this is one class and that's a whole series of classes. If you're hungry for more after this one, I highly recommend UWash's Machine Learning specialization.
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Anonymous
3 months ago
is taking this course right now.
This course, and the entire specialization is very poorly constructed and taught. You don't really understand the concepts behind the code you are writing, and how to go through a data science project. Its probably the worst course and specialization for data science out there!
The ONLY reason why you might want to take this is if you already know ML and statistics extremely well, and just want to brush up on your skills. The R programming course was helpful for me for this purpose because I had already used R a few years ago and only wanted a refresher. Otherwise, don't expect to learn much and you would rather get confused rather than learn anything valuable.
The ONLY reason why you might want to take this is if you already know ML and statistics extremely well, and just want to brush up on your skills. The R programming course was helpful for me for this purpose because I had already used R a few years ago and only wanted a refresher. Otherwise, don't expect to learn much and you would rather get confused rather than learn anything valuable.
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Anonymous
4 years ago
completed this course.
I found this course very valuable. It isn't realistic to expect to become an expert in machine learning in the 4-5 days you might spend on studying the materials and, if you do, you'll be disappointed. However, it is a pretty good practical introductory course for those, like me, who start off knowing nothing about the subject.
If you're not too clear what machine learning is, what problems it can solve, and what the principles and procedures involved are, you'll find out in week 1. Weeks 2 & 3 are practical - you end up being able to use powerful tools like random forests for pr…
If you're not too clear what machine learning is, what problems it can solve, and what the principles and procedures involved are, you'll find out in week 1. Weeks 2 & 3 are practical - you end up being able to use powerful tools like random forests for pr…
I found this course very valuable. It isn't realistic to expect to become an expert in machine learning in the 4-5 days you might spend on studying the materials and, if you do, you'll be disappointed. However, it is a pretty good practical introductory course for those, like me, who start off knowing nothing about the subject.
If you're not too clear what machine learning is, what problems it can solve, and what the principles and procedures involved are, you'll find out in week 1. Weeks 2 & 3 are practical - you end up being able to use powerful tools like random forests for prediction. Week 4 is light-weight, as throughout the specialisation, but provides a quick overview of important specialised sub-fields like forecasting and unsupervised learning.
There are some glitches in the materials and I got the wrong end of the stick a few times and became very confused because important ideas hadn't been flagged up enough for me to spot their significance. However, I don't recognise the problems with the assessment that one of these reviews complains about.
Don't underestimate the background that you'll need. There are no revision classes or recaps here. You'll have to have fully mastered the material in the earlier modules in the specialisation to survive, especially the statistics, but also cleaning data, exploring data, producing reproducible reports and putting them on github and, of course, R.
If you're not too clear what machine learning is, what problems it can solve, and what the principles and procedures involved are, you'll find out in week 1. Weeks 2 & 3 are practical - you end up being able to use powerful tools like random forests for prediction. Week 4 is light-weight, as throughout the specialisation, but provides a quick overview of important specialised sub-fields like forecasting and unsupervised learning.
There are some glitches in the materials and I got the wrong end of the stick a few times and became very confused because important ideas hadn't been flagged up enough for me to spot their significance. However, I don't recognise the problems with the assessment that one of these reviews complains about.
Don't underestimate the background that you'll need. There are no revision classes or recaps here. You'll have to have fully mastered the material in the earlier modules in the specialisation to survive, especially the statistics, but also cleaning data, exploring data, producing reproducible reports and putting them on github and, of course, R.
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Prashant B
a year ago
is taking this course right now.
compare to some other course for deep learning i have taken this course really sucks.Does not give any understanding of deep network . Trainer seems to be quite dull in explaining concepts...
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Loki R
2 years ago
by
is taking this course right now, spending 20 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be easy.
This course is very useful one for me.Thanks for giving such a opportunity to me.Please try to teach us more advanced topics like this in future.
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Fabian H
4 years ago
completed this course.
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Rafael P
4 years ago
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Andrei
4 years ago
is taking this course right now.
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4 years ago
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