Modern methods from artificial intelligence and machine learning, in particular deep learning methods based on multi-layered artificial neural networks, provide unprecedented tools for data analysis and prediction. Over the past years, they have transformed many scientific fields and have become ubiquitous in real-world applications from speech recognition to self-driving cars.

This seminar will provide a broad introduction to machine learning from statistical foundations to applications in the sciences, economics and engineering. The focus will be on modern machine learning methods for predictive data analytics such as random forests, gradient boosting machines and neural networks, their trans-disciplinary application to supervised learning tasks, and approaches to gain insight into the 'black box' of machine learning models. Lectures on the theoretical background will be accompanied by hands-on programming exercises in Python that will cover practical aspects of implementing machine learning methods for analyzing scientific and real-world datasets.

The seminar consists of three parts:

1. A 3-day block course of lectures and hands-on programming exercises will take place on April 11-13, 2022, either online or in person at Campus South, depending on the Covid-19 situation and regulations. Participation is mandatory. Some familiarity with basic concepts of probability theory and statistics is expected, as well as basic programming skills in Python. For the programming exercises, participants are expected to bring their own laptop with Python and relevant libraries installed. 
2. Afterwards, all students will conduct a project for which they will choose a dataset from a list of scientific and real-world datasets and apply what they have learned in the course. Exemplary tasks include predictions of AirBnB prices, wine ratings, salaries, air quality, electricity prices or wildfires. The (potentially preliminary) results will be presented in a meeting during the semester (0.5 days, date to be determined, either online or in person), in a presentation of max. 15 minutes. Participation is mandatory.
3. A final report on the project of 10-20 pages and the code has to be submitted by September 30, 2022. The final grade will be based on the active participation in the seminar (10%), the presentation (30%) and the final report (60%).