Probability & Statistics for Machine Learning & Data Science

Instructor: Luis Serrano

Intermediate Level • 4 hours to complete • Flexible Schedule

What You'll Learn

  • Describe and quantify the uncertainty inherent in predictions made by machine learning models
  • Visually and intuitively understand the properties of commonly used probability distributions in machine learning and data science
  • Apply common statistical methods like maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and maximum a priori estimation (MAP) to machine learning problems
  • Assess the performance of machine learning models using interval estimates and margin of errors

Skills You'll Gain

Data Science
Bayesian Statistics
Probability Distribution
Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Statistical Visualization
Probability & Statistics
A/B Testing
Probability
Statistical Analysis
Statistical Machine Learning
Descriptive Statistics
Statistical Inference
Sampling (Statistics)
Exploratory Data Analysis

Shareable Certificate

Earn a shareable certificate to add to your LinkedIn profile

Outcomes

  • Learn new concepts from industry experts
  • Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
  • Develop job-relevant skills with hands-on projects
  • Earn a shareable career certificate

There are 4 modules in this course

In this week, you will learn about probability of events and various rules of probability to correctly do arithmetic with probabilities. You will learn the concept of conditional probability and the key idea behind Bayes theorem. In lesson 2, we generalize the concept of probability of events to probability distribution over random variables. You will learn about some common probability distributions like the Binomial distribution and the Normal distribution.

This week you will learn about different measures to describe probability distributions as well as any dataset. These include measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode), variance, skewness, and kurtosis. The concept of the expected value of a random variable is introduced to help you understand each of these measures. You will also learn about some visual tools to describe data and distributions. In lesson 2, you will learn about the probability distribution of two or more random variables using concepts like joint distribution, marginal distribution, and conditional distribution. You will end the week by learning about covariance: a generalization of variance to two or more random variables.

This week shifts its focus from probability to statistics. You will start by learning the concept of a sample and a population and two fundamental results from statistics that concern samples and population: the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem. In lesson 2, you will learn the first and the simplest method of estimation in statistics: point estimation. You will see how maximum likelihood estimation, the most common point estimation method, works and how regularization helps prevent overfitting. You'll then learn how Bayesian Statistics incorporates the concept of prior beliefs into the way data is evaluated and conclusions are reached.

This week you will learn another estimation method called interval estimation. The most common interval estimates are confidence intervals and you will see how they are calculated and how to correctly interpret them. In lesson 2, you will learn about hypothesis testing where estimates are formulated as a hypothesis and then tested in the presence of available evidence or a sample of data. You will learn the concept of p-value that helps in making a decision about a hypothesis test and also learn some common tests like the t-test, two-sample t-test, and the paired t-test. You will end the week with an interesting application of hypothesis testing in data science: A/B testing.