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Practical Machine Learning Course

A hands-on course that empowers learners to build real-world machine learning models using R’s caret package.

access

Lifetime

level

Beginner

certificate

Certificate of completion

language

English

What will you in the Practical Machine Learning Course

  • Learn the full workflow of predictive modeling, from data preprocessing to final model evaluation.

  • Understand critical concepts like overfitting, cross-validation, and out-of-sample error.

  • Apply machine learning algorithms including decision trees, random forests, and regularized regression.

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  • Use the caret package in R for building, training, and validating models.

  • Learn how to combine multiple models and use unsupervised methods for prediction.

Program Overview

1. Introduction to Prediction and Study Design
Duration: ~2 hours

  • Overview of predictive modeling concepts.

  • Introduction to training/test sets, error types, and cross-validation.

  • Basics of designing a machine learning study.

2. Machine Learning with caret in R
Duration: ~2 hours

  • Working with the caret package to train and evaluate models.

  • Data splitting, preprocessing (scaling, PCA), and model tuning.

  • Plotting predictors and using caret’s modeling workflow.

3. Decision Trees, Random Forests, and Boosting
Duration: ~1.5 hours

  • Understanding and implementing tree-based models.

  • Random forests and boosting explained with practical examples.

  • Introduction to model-based prediction approaches.

4. Regularization and Model Combination
Duration: ~2 hours

  • Concepts of regularized regression (e.g., ridge and lasso).

  • Combining multiple predictive models to improve accuracy.

  • Brief introduction to forecasting and unsupervised prediction.

  • Final assignment: build a working prediction model and submit for peer review.

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Job Outlook

  • Data Scientists: Gain practical experience in model building and validation.

  • Machine Learning Engineers: Learn foundational methods for scalable ML applications.

  • Business Analysts: Use data-driven techniques to support strategic decision-making.

  • Academic Researchers: Apply machine learning methods to experimental or observational data.

  • R Programmers: Advance your skills in applying machine learning using the caret package.

Explore More Learning Paths

Strengthen your applied machine learning skills with these carefully curated courses designed to help you build, evaluate, and deploy models for real-world datasets.

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9.7Expert Score
Highly Recommended
A robust course that delivers strong hands-on experience in supervised learning using real datasets and widely-used R libraries.
Value
9.3
Price
9.5
Skills
9.7
Information
9.6
PROS
  • Strong focus on practical machine learning concepts
  • Teaches a powerful and flexible R package (caret)
  • Prepares learners to build and test models end-to-end
  • Offers a capstone-style prediction project
CONS
  • Requires prior R and basic statistics knowledge
  • Limited theory on advanced models or deep learning

Specification: Practical Machine Learning Course

access

Lifetime

level

Beginner

certificate

Certificate of completion

language

English

Practical Machine Learning Course
Practical Machine Learning Course
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