Hands-on Predictive Analytics with Python

Course Objectives

This course is approximately 50% hands-on, combining expert lecture, real-world demonstrations and group discussions with machine-based practical labs and exercises.  Our engaging instructors and mentors are highly experienced practitioners who bring years of current "on-the-job" experience into every classroom.  Working in a hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert team, attendees will learn to:

• Understand the main concepts and principles of predictive analytics
• Use the Python data analytics ecosystem to implement end-to-end predictive analytics projects
• Explore advanced predictive modeling algorithms w with an emphasis on theory with intuitive explanations
• Learn to deploy a predictive model's results as an interactive application
• Learn about the stages involved in producing complete predictive analytics solutions
• Understand how to define a problem, propose a solution, and prepare a dataset
• Use visualizations to explore relationships and gain insights into the dataset
• Learn to build regression and classification models using scikit-learn
• Use Keras to build powerful neural network models that produce accurate predictions
• Learn to serve a model's predictions as a web application

Course Prerequisites

This course is geared for Python experienced attendees who wish to learn and use basic machine learning algorithms and concepts. Students should have skills at least equivalent to the Python for Data Science courses we offer.

Take Before: Students should have skills at least equivalent to the following course(s) or should have attended as a pre-requisite:

• Understanding Data Science | A Technical Overview – 1 day (helpful but not required)
• Introduction to Python Programming (3 days) or TTPS4873 Fast Track to Python for Data Science (3 days)

Course Agenda

Please note that this list of topics is based on our standard course offering, evolved from typical industry uses and trends. We’ll work with you to tune this course and level of coverage to target the skills you need most.

1. The Predictive Analytics Process

• Technical requirements
• What is predictive analytics?
• Reviewing important concepts of predictive analytics
• The predictive analytics process
• A quick tour of Python's data science stack

2. Problem Understanding and Data Preparation

• Technical requirements
• Understanding the business problem and proposing a solution
• Practical project – diamond prices
• Practical project – credit card default

3. Dataset Understanding – Exploratory Data Analysis

• Technical requirements
• What is EDA?
• Univariate EDA
• Bivariate EDA
• Introduction to graphical multivariate EDA

4. Predicting Numerical Values with Machine Learning

• Technical requirements
• Introduction to ML
• Practical considerations before modeling
• MLR
• Lasso regression
• KNN
• Training versus testing error

5. Predicting Categories with Machine Learning

• Technical requirements
• Classification tasks
• Credit card default dataset
• Logistic regression
• Classification trees
• Random forests
• Training versus testing error
• Multiclass classification
• Naive Bayes classifiers

6. Introducing Neural Nets for Predictive Analytics

• Technical requirements
• Introducing neural network models
• Introducing TensorFlow and Keras
• Regressing with neural networks
• Classification with neural networks
• The dark art of training neural networks

7. Model Evaluation

• Technical requirements
• Evaluation of regression models
• Evaluation for classification models
• The k-fold cross-validation

8. Model Tuning and Improving Performance

• Technical requirements
• Hyperparameter tuning
• Improving performance

9. Implementing a Model with Dash

• Technical requirements
• Model communication and/or deployment phase
• Introducing Dash
• Implementing a predictive model as a web application