On the 2nd of September Mooncascade invited machine learning enthusiasts in their awesome Tartu office as part of the Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 pre-event series! What comes up to your head when hearing data science and machine learning in R? Not much? So hadn´t plenty of participants in the Mooncascade “Data science and Machine learning in R” camp in Tartu. But now they have broad overview of data science and machine learning and even more, they are able to turn data into something useful. In the following is explained how they did it.
This event was another one in the series leading to Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 hackathon in October this year. Speakers Dima Fishmann and Elena Sügis provided participants the basics of data analysis and machine learning, gave hands-on experience in the fields using real-life data set and R programming language.
In the beginning of the workshop the Data Science was introduced. The introduction based on discussion about basic steps to make data talk and confess, starting from data acquisition and ending with predictive modelling and visualisation. Next, the R programming language was introduced as a tool for efficient data analysis. Main advantages and disadvantages of R were analysed compared to other languages and an example code written in R was examined. Then the participants got opportunity to dive into the general machine learning pipeline, which starts with data preprocessing and feature selection techniques that are used to prepare data sets for the predictive analysis. There followed review of some of the most popular methods in machine learning that are used to solve real-life puzzles. At the end of the workshop, all participants had chance to challenge their newly acquired skills by taking part in a small machine learning related competition.
Whilst friday, lots of people attended in the workshop in new Mooncascade office in SPARK. Priit Salumaa, the co-founder of Garage48 and Mooncascade, said: There gathered over 60 addicted ones to machine learning, which is more than expected. I am happy to host so many smart-pants/clever people in Mooncascade office.
A content participant said: I got lots of examples of where data science is used and where it could be useful. Data science is the golden land between data and money DATA=...=$$$ and in one scientist´s head should be balance between simple, not perfect and complicated, but ideal (not perfect <… > complicated, ideal). Though in this workshop the R language was studied and plenty of participants had no experience of R beforehand, turned out that it was no problem at all. By the way one tought that it is insightful for a stranger to data science. As Harvard Business Review put it: “Data scientists: the sexiest job of the 21st century.”
Join also our next Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 Pre-event on the 21st of Sept, 2016 in Tallinn. For more info, go to: https://www.facebook.com/events/299275440434936/
The Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 main hackathon will take place on the 21-23th of Oct in Tartu, Estonia. More info: http://garage48.org/events/openbigdata
Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 will take place in the framework of EU Structural Funds support scheme “Raising Public Awareness about the Information Society” and is funded by the European Regional Development Fund