Training on Machine Learning at HSE
On January 21 and 28 were held the first two training sessions on machine learning at HSE St. Petersburg. The event was organized by the members of community “Open Data Science”, who also held regular trainings in Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Odessa. The event was open to anyone interested and pre-registered.
The training was attended by students of master's program "Big Data Analysis for Business, Economy, and Society", and Minor Data Science. The first training consisted of two parts: at the beginning there was a live broadcast from the office of Yandex in Moscow where the winners of the recent machine learning competitions reported about the structure of competition, data processing and successful algorithms. Separately were discussed the methods and models used to achieve the highest results. The second part consisted of a review of the current competitions, where participants of the training can try their hand. By the way, recently, third-year students of minor “Data Science” had already received one of these competition tasks in a simplified form, as a homework and coped with it well enough.
“The training turned out to be quite interesting and informative. Unexpectedly, there were lots of people from outside the HSE. It was pleased to know that I understand and know what is going on at the workshop, but it only increased the desire to keep nose to the grindstone and continue the personal development. I enjoyed the atmosphere, especially programmers humor. Also, inspired by the speech of the participant of competition, organised by the bank “Tinkoff”, I would like to work with this dataset.”
Ivan Mishalkin, participant of "Machine Learning and Social Computing" Research Group and student of minor in Data Science
The second training session was held in the form of active discussion of current competitions. More experienced colleagues shared their solutions, gave tips for beginners as on technical issues related to the using of tools and packages, as well as on how to solve such problems, what approaches to use and how to achieve good results.
“I believe that the main purpose of such training is to share the knowledge and experience and to demonstrate that participation in the competition is not horrible, but useful. Such events are allowed to create an informal environment for growing and development, for those who already know something and those who have always wanted, but did not know how to start. I hope that this initiative will expand, involving more and more participants. ”
Alexander Sirotkin, Head of the Programme: Big Data Analysis for Business, Economy, and Society , Head of Machine Learning and Social Computing Research Group
In foreseeable future, organizers plan to set up study groups for solving and analysis of real cases, which are particularly useful for beginners. Training in St. Petersburg will be held regularly on Saturdays at various locations of the city. But definitely, the HSE still will be a place for analyzing cases on machine learning.
And the closest training is planned within the framework of the winter schools which will be held February 4-5.