Effective data analysis can make a huge difference to a company's efficiency. Advances in machine learning (ML) have enabled data scientists to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and take their analytics to the next level. Brian D'Alessandro, head of data science on Instagram's Well-Being and Integrity team and author of Cornell University's Applied Machine Learning and AI Certification Program, has 20 years of experience in building ML models. D'Alessandro spoke with the eCornell team about the certificate, ML's teaching approach, and career paths.
What can students expect from the program?
“I would argue that even though students have learned how to build models, they have not yet learned how to build good models. Adjusting model parameters to get the predictive quality they are looking for requires an empirical approach. A process is required. Therefore, this certificate ensures that students learn how to build a strong basic model… consider how to tune and validate it, and then work in an industry environment. We start introducing more complex algorithms that are used more frequently. We cover the gamut, including K-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Trees, and Linear Models. Throughout the program, we introduce APIs that span a variety of machine learning algorithms. We value consistency.”
Read the full story on the eCornell blog.
