Data Science and Machine Learning: Everything You Need to Know

In recent years, Deloitte noted that because technology and the digital experience are core to a business’s success, every company should now consider itself a tech company. IT-based strategies don’t solely affect IT teams, these strategies drive overall business health. Data analysis, machine learning, and cloud computing are tools integral to the business. For those in non-technical roles, it can seem daunting to keep up with the jargon and use cases of the technical topics mentioned by IT- and tech-minded peers, especially given how rapidly skills and technologies change. Enter the Executive Briefing course series on Udemy Business—straightforward overviews on topics like data science, machine learning, and big data.

Our Executive Briefing courses are intended to help non-technical employees and senior leaders gain a greater understanding of how new technologies are being used or should be used by businesses. Because we know how challenging it can be to carve out time in the week to learn, each course is under two hours, designed for the schedules of even the most time-crunched business leaders.

To create this content we spoke directly with customers and collaborated with three of the most popular Udemy instructors, Jose Portilla, Kirill Eremenko, and Frank Kane.

The importance of these briefing courses can be summed up from an example from our customer, Publicis Sapient, a technology and business strategy consulting firm. Sapient saw that their business development leaders needed to better understand how AI, machine learning, and data science work so that they could speak more confidently on these topics and win new business. The AI Academy they created offered in-depth Udemy courses for technical employees and high-level overview briefing courses called “AI for Execs” targeted towards senior leaders. The result? One non-technical employee at Sapient said:

“If the AI Academy program hadn’t been created and well-structured, I would have spent weeks scouring through material out there and would never have had the opportunity to win this business.”

We’re excited to announce the launch of three new Executive Briefing courses on Udemy, taught by our top instructors, to help non-technical teams and business leaders better understand the technologies that are being used around the world and how they can be applied to your organization. These courses will be a crucial resource for developing an org-wide understanding of three indispensable technologies: data science, machine learning, and Hadoop.

Executive Briefing: Data science with Jose Portilla

Meet Jose Portilla, the instructor behind the Executive Briefing course on Data Science. He’s taught data science skills to over one million Udemy students in topics ranging from fundamentals with the Python Bootcamp to advanced subjects like TensorFlow. Jose’s unparalleled expertise will help professionals of all levels get up to speed on a skill they’re likely hearing about often in meetings—data science—without requiring that they learn SQL or understand complex mathematics.

The course begins with an overview of what makes a piece of data high-quality, which will help you understand what data at your organization is suitable for analysis and machine learning applications. You’ll also learn the basics of data science, statistical topics, and data visualization methods.

Specifically, the Executive Briefing on Data Science course covers:

• What is good quality versus bad quality data
• The machine learning process
• The difference between supervised and unsupervised learning
• Real-world use cases for machine learning algorithms

Executive Briefing: Machine learning with Kirill Eremenko

Machine learning can reshape your company’s trajectory, but only if you adopt a strategy focused on three components: data, tools, and teams. Udemy instructor, Kirill Eremenko’s Executive Briefing course on Machine Learning covers these three areas and offers real-world examples of how leading tech companies have used machine learning, often through inexpensive open source solutions, to address customer needs.

In under 90 minutes, Kirill’s machine learning overview offers the insights that, in his own words, “could save you – or make you – a fortune.” Rather than leaping into the latest technology, this course is intended to help businesses avoid common pitfalls in building a machine learning strategy, and instead, helps you create a pragmatic approach to machine learning at your organization.

Specifically, the Executive Briefing on Machine Learning course covers:

• Technical terms and topics related to machine learning
• How to develop a strategy for implementing machine learning in your organization
• The technical tools needed for machine learning projects
• How to build a reliable machine learning team, comprised of experts and support staff
• Tangible ways machine learning can supercharge a company’s finances, innovation, and marketing strategies

Executive Briefing: Big data and the Hadoop ecosystem with Frank Kane

We regularly hear from companies that conversations mired in technical jargon can cause a major disconnect between technical and non-technical employees. One example of confusing jargon we see a lot: “big data.” Two little words that represent a large technical program, reaching across an entire organization. In the Executive Briefing course on Big Data, Frank Kane sheds light on the subject and explains how big data solutions will impact your organization’s business. As a former senior manager at Amazon and IMDb, Frank has led the development of numerous big data systems throughout his career and shares an insider’s look at the technical side of big data systems.

In this course, Frank helps business leaders identify the right questions to ask before making investments in expensive big data solutions. Does a big data system offer enough benefit to justify not only the platform cost but also the people costs required to train current employees and hire future employees that are well-versed in these systems?

Specifically, the Executive Briefing on Big Data course covers:

• What to look for when evaluating data platform vendors
• How to define “big data” through the “four V’s” – velocity, volume, variety, and veracity
• Real-world examples of big data in business
• The main data platform vendors (Cloudera and Hortonworks) and their product offerings
• The many components of Hadoop and the larger Hadoop ecosystem
• Understanding the real costs of deploying a big data platform at your company, as it might not be the right decision for all organizations

Once you or your team have learned the basics of new tech with our Executive Briefing courses, you can then dive deeper into these tech topics by checking out more courses from these same instructors on big data, data science, and machine learning. To access our Executive Briefing course series, please request a demo and speak with someone on the Udemy Business team.