NBAY 6920 - Machine Learning Applications in Business

Spring. 1.5 credits. Letter grades only (no audit).

C. Lee.

The purpose of this class is to introduce you to fundamental concepts in data science & machine learning (ML) and prepare you for your career path as an entrepreneur or various business roles (e.g. product manager, marketing, operations, consulting…etc) in for-profit & non-profit organizations. This course differs from the classes offered from the engineer side in that we will use a business-centric approach, where we first begin with the business problem to be solved, and then we cover the technical methodologies to solve the context-specific use cases. Throughout the course I will teach you a decision-making framework to unite the various disparate use cases under a common thread. This framework draws upon my years of experience as both an AI researcher and as a business consultant. I have been fortunate to apply ML to various business contexts, from Silicon Valley startups to the Fortune 500, from private equity to non-profit organizations, and I am actively using and evolving this framework in my current role as an entrepreneur in my own AI startup. I will show you how to use this framework using a mixture of business case studies, real-world context data sets, lectures, and guest speakers. My hope is that you will leave this course with the skills to assemble the talent/resources to tackle the data science and ML challenges that you will encounter when you work for large firms or starting your ventures.