MACHINE LEARNING:

FROM DATA TO DECISIONS

Business insights come from turning what is unknown into what is

known. That’s the power of machine learning.

Delivered in collaboration with

 OVERVIEW

Machine learning is having profound effects in many the latest thought leadership in machine learning
different industries, from financial services to retail tools and techniques.
to advertising. It is fast becoming a fundamental tool
for making better decisions in business—decisions
driven by data, not gut feelings or guesswork.

Today, every business has access to reams of

data, whether it’s operational data, customer data,
third party data, or supplier data. The question for
decision makers becomes: How can I use this data
to make informed predictions, take action, and
evaluate the outcomes for future decision making? Spending on artificial
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is intelligence and machine
at the forefront of research and practice for this learning is forecast to grow
01 emerging field within data science. Professor
from $12 billion in 2017
Devavrat Shah, who leads the department of
Statistics and Data Science at MIT, takes learners to $57.6 billion by 2021,
on a deep dive into what’s possible with machine according to International
learning.
Data Corporation (IDC).
This online program takes a look at machine
learning through a lens of practical applications
and requires no prerequisites in terms of math
or computational sciences, although some basic
experience with statistics is helpful. It is designed
specifically for decision makers who want to develop
a competitive edge by harnessing the power of
machine learning.

Regardless of where you are on the spectrum

of machine learning adoption, and more broadly
artificial intelligence, this online program provides
WHO IS THIS
PROGRAM FOR?

Decision makers across all business and technical functions will gain a practical understanding of the tools
and techniques used in machine learning applications for business. Examples from retail, ecommerce,
financial services, healthcare, social media, advertising, technology, gaming, and pharmaceuticals are
included in this online program. However, participants from all industries and sectors will find these
examples relevant.

Functional and cross-functional teams are encouraged to attend together, to accelerate the machine
learning adoption process.

02
 YOUR
LEARNING JOURNEY

The program takes you through a progression of the four building blocks of machine learning. In addition to the
practical knowledge that you’ll gain from the video lectures, you’ll learn from live webinars with faculty, peer
discussions, case studies, assignments, and quizzes. Throughout the journey, there are real-life machine
learning facilitators to provide guidance and clarification. At the end of the program, you should be prepared
to apply some of these techniques at your own organization.

Understanding Data Prediction

Visualizing One-dimensional & Multi- Supervised Learning

Dimensional Data
03 Regression
Using PCA, Clustering, K-Means, and
Topic Models Classification

Structured vs. Unstructured Data Neural Networks

Decision Making Causal Inference

Optimal Decision in Presence of Cause and Effect Relationship

Uncertainty
Thoughtful Experience Design
Dynamic vs. Static Environment Randomized Control
High to Low Information Rate Hypothesis Testing
Using Model Predictive Control, Markov Synthetic Control
Decision Process, Multi-Armed Bandit, and Time-Series Forecasting
Reinforcement Learning

Note: MIT Professional Education reserves the right to change the curriculum and delivery of the program to
improve the participant experience.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

The tools and techniques in this machine learning program can help to address many common business
challenges. Learn with examples from:

BANKING PHARMACEUTICAL
How do you predict When developing new drugs,
whether a borrower will how can you design better
default on a loan? experiments to know if a new
drug will be more effective
than an existing one?

MARKETING RETAIL 04
How do you know which To optimize your inventory,
marketing channel is how do you know whether
performing best , and to pull from a distribution
what is the interaction center or a retail store to
effect when you are using fulfill an online order?
multiple channels?

FINANCE ECOMMERCE
How are data scientists How do you decide when
exploring ways to predict to cross-market vs. upsell
the future price of digital a customer at checkout
assets, such as Bitcoin? —what’s drives more
revenue?
 PROGRAM MODULES
Module 1:
Introduction and Overview of
Machine Learning
Overview of the four building blocks of
machine learning:
Understanding data: What is it telling us?
Prediction: What will happen?
Decision making: What to do?
Causal inference: Did it work?
05
Module 3:
Prediction Part 1 –
Regression
Understand the basic concept of linear
regression and how it can be used with
historical data to build models that can
predict future outcomes.
How to build a model that fits best with
your data
How to quantify the degree of your uncertainty
What to do when you don’t have enough data
What lies beyond linear regression
Application: Designing a marketing campaign.
Module 2:
Understanding
Your Data
Learn the basic characteristics of data sets
and identify effective statistical tools and
visualizations to glean insights from your data.
Ask the right questions of the data
Know which tools to use to unlock insights
How data visualization clarifies data
Application: Wikipedia and Online Marketplaces,
Amazon, and Etsy.
Module 4:
Prediction Part 2 –
Classification
Classification is used to predict outcomes that
fall into two or more categories, such as: male/
female, yes/no, or red/blue/green.
Compare the ability of different methods to
minimize prediction errors
Make better predictions, based on your data
and desired outcome
Use the right approaches to deal with data
complexity
Application: Spam filters, detecting malicious
network connections, and predicting credit
defaults among borrowers.
Module 5:
Prediction Part 3 – Neural
Networks
Neural networks are much like the networks
in the human brain. They are used in machine
learning to model complex relationships
between inputs and outputs and to find
patterns in data.
What are neural networks and how do
they work?
Explore the history and examples of simple and
complex neural networks
How neural networks minimize errors,
regardless of the size of your data set
Application: Improving online search in
ecommerce websites.
Module 7:
Decision Making
Applications
Focus on many of the practical applications
of decision making, from static to dynamic
situations.
Learn about making real-time recommendations
for customers to drive more business
Learn how to achieve optimal inventory
management
See how data scientists are exploring ways to
predict the future price of digital assets such as
Bitcoin
Application: Deciding on routes to work and
deciding how to make investments in fast-changing
environments.
Module 6:
Decision Making
Foundations
Decision making is about selecting the
“optimal” decision or action in the presence
of uncertainty, which all business and
technical leaders face regularly.
Learn how the decisions you make impact the
immediate future and beyond
Choose the right approach based on the
environment, rate of information flow, and your
goal
Strike the balance between exploration
(identifying what we don’t yet know) with
exploitation (using what we already know)
Application: Retail planning, website design,
and creating a perfect chess player.
06
Module 8:
Causal
Inference
Casual inference is about understanding the
relationship between cause and effect.
Given a set of observations, identify what
caused those observations
Learn to design experiments that deliver
meaningful conclusions
Application: Assess whether discount coupons
caused higher sales of certain products, or
whether some external factor, such as an
improved economy, was the reason for the
increased sales.
 PROGRAM FACULTY

Devavrat Shah is a professor with the department of

electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
He is a member of the Laboratory for Information and
Decision Systems (LIDS) and Operations Research
Center (ORC), and the Director of the newly formed
Statistics and Data Center in Institute for Data,
Systems, and Society (IDSS). His research focus
is on the theory of large complex networks, which
includes network algorithms, stochastic networks,
network information theory, and large-scale statistical
inference.

Professor Shah was awarded the first ACM

SIGMETRICS Rising Star Award 2008 for his work
on network scheduling algorithms. He received the
2010 Erlang Prize from INFORMS, which is given to
a young researcher for outstanding contributions to
07 applied probability. He is currently an associate editor
of Operations Research.
DEVAVRAT SHAH Professor Shah’s research is driven by a desire to
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer engineer a socially-integrated network where a
Science typical user may connect through a smart-phone,
Director of Statistics and Data Science Center socialize through Facebook, learn from Wikipedia,
and help bring socio-political change through Twitter.
MIT
As a network theorist, his contributions towards
addressing these challenges involve designing better
wireless access networks and processing social data
and scalable algorithms that can operate in data
center like facility.
CERTIFICATE

Get recognized! Upon successful completion of the program, MIT Professional Education grants a certificate
of completion to participants. This program is graded as a pass or fail; participants must receive 80% to pass
and obtain the certificate of completion.

4.8 Continuing Education Units Awarded

08
 SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

MIT Professional Education Fire Hydrant Award

It’s said that studying with MIT is like drinking from a fire hose—intense, immensely satisfying. For those
participants who demonstrate leadership by going above and beyond in the program, they’ll receive the coveted
Fire Hydrant Award. This award can be displayed in professional bios, such as on LinkedIn. Decisions are
made by MIT program faculty and facilitators based on participation and behaviors that exemplify exceptional
leadership and contribution to the overall program experience for the cohort.

09
DURATION 2 months, online
6-8 hours/week

PROGRAM FEES $1,950

ABOUT
MIT Professional Education is collaborating with
online education provider EMERITUS Institute of
Management to offer a portfolio of high-impact
EMERITUS online programs. By working with EMERITUS, we
are able to broaden access beyond our on-campus
offerings in a collaborative and engaging format that
stays true to the quality of Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. EMERITUS’s approach to learning is
based on a cohort-based design to maximize peer-
10
to-peer sharing and includes live teaching with world-
class faculty and hands-on project-based learning. In
the last one year, more than 13,000 students from
over 120 countries have benefitted professionally
from EMERITUS’s courses.
CONNECT WITH A
PROGRAM ADVISOR

Email: mit@emeritus.org
Phone: +1 315-982-5094
+1 315-277-2746

Delivered in collaboration with