The practice of investment management has been transformed in recent years by computational methods. This course provides an introduction to the underlying science, with the aim of giving you a thorough understanding of that scientific basis. However, instead of merely explaining the science, we help you build on that foundation in a practical manner, with an emphasis on the hands-on implementation of those ideas in the Python programming language. This course is the first in a four course specialization in Data Science and Machine Learning in Asset Management but can be taken independently. In this course, we cover the basics of Investment Science, and we'll build practical implementations of each of the concepts along the way.

It feels impossible to keep up with every new concept and technology in data science and machine learning. You have multiple languages, libraries and design principles. We have written pieces on different resources that can help data professionals keep up to date with all the various technologies. However, many of these courses cost money. But coursera offers an opportunity to take online courses for free from actual colleges and educational institutions.

Artificial Intelligence today is where personal computers were back in the 90s: a new skill that everyone will have to become familiar with within the next few years. What if you could be as familiar with AI as you are with MS Office? Why this course: The problem at hand is that while there are not enough data scientists and engineers to create AI solutions, there are even fewer managers and leaders who know how to apply AI to business or organizational problems in the right manner, or have the time to learn it in detail. The good news, however, is that just like with computers, most of us do not need to learn how to code to understand and use AI well. This course will help you get a thorough understanding of AI techniques & how to use/manage them, to support your career as well as your organization's growth. It will also clear the confusion around what AI can or cannot do, and will allow you to spot strong or weak AI solutions - all in under 3 hours.

As if manufacturers didn't already have enough on their hands trying to find suitable applicants for their shop floors and R&D departments, the world of artificial intelligence is about to explode onto the scene. And when it does, the scramble for talent will only grow maddeningly tougher. This may sound like trouble, but there's a tremendous upside. According to a newly released study by the MAPI Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), not only will AI enable machines to do a lot more--but it will also empower humans to do a lot more as well. That means an upsurge of new kinds of jobs related to developing new AI solutions, leading new AI business strategies and supervising AI implementations.

The following is a guest post by Pete McCain, a technology startup enthusiast associated with App Velocity. If you would like to submit a guest post, please contact us. There was a time when we all were highly skeptical about online education because we couldn't fathom a computer screen replacing our classrooms and the education ideals that come with them. But now examining the impact of online education, we can clearly see how eagerly we've embraced the idea of e-learning. It has levelled up education in the developed parts of the world and democratized education where schools and teachers couldn't reach.

Producing content for Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms like Coursera and EdX might be academically rewarding (and potentially lucrative), but it's time-consuming -- particularly where videos are involved. Professional-level lecture clips require not only a veritable studio's worth of equipment, but significant resources to transfer, edit, and upload footage of each lesson. That's why research scientists formerly at Udacity, an online learning platform with over 150 courses, are investigating a machine learning framework that automatically generates lecture videos from audio narration alone. They claim in a preprint paper ("LumièreNet: Lecture Video Synthesis from Audio") on Arxiv.org that their AI system -- LumièreNet -- can synthesize footage of any length by directly mapping between audio and corresponding visuals. "In current video production pipeline, an AI machinery which semi (or fully) automates lecture video production at scale would be highly valuable to enable agile video content development (rather than reshooting each new video)," wrote the paper's coauthors.

Item response theory (IRT) models are widely used in psychometrics and educational measurement, being deployed in many high stakes tests such as the GRE aptitude test. IRT has largely focused on estimation of a single latent trait (e.g. ability) that remains static through the collection of item responses. However, in contemporary settings where item responses are being continuously collected, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), interest will naturally be on the dynamics of ability, thus complicating usage of traditional IRT models. We propose DynAEsti, an augmentation of the traditional IRT Expectation Maximization algorithm that allows ability to be a continuously varying curve over time. In the process, we develop CurvFiFE, a novel non-parametric continuous-time technique that handles the curve-fitting/regression problem extended to address more general probabilistic emissions (as opposed to simply noisy data points). Furthermore, to accomplish this, we develop a novel technique called grafting, which can successfully approximate distributions represented by graphical models when other popular techniques like Loopy Belief Propogation (LBP) and Variational Inference (VI) fail. The performance of DynAEsti is evaluated through simulation, where we achieve results comparable to the optimal of what is observed in the static ability scenario. Finally, DynAEsti is applied to a longitudinal performance dataset (80-years of competitive golf at the 18-hole Masters Tournament) to demonstrate its ability to recover key properties of human performance and the heterogeneous characteristics of the different holes. Python code for CurvFiFE and DynAEsti is publicly available at github.com/chausies/DynAEstiAndCurvFiFE. This is the full version of our ICDM 2019 paper.

Udacity, the global lifelong learning platform, together with Bertelsmann, a media, services and education company, announced that applications are now open for 15,000 scholarships in Data, AI, and Cloud-Computing. As Udacity and Bertelsmann shared earlier this year, the new scholarship program is part of a three-year commitment by Bertelsmann to fund 50,000 scholarships. Both companies have partnered to increase learning opportunities in emerging technologies for students across the globe. "There simply aren't enough people who are equipped with Cloud, Data, and Artificial Intelligence skills," said Gabriel Dalporto, CEO of Udacity. "That's why Bertelsmann and Udacity share a commitment to train new talent and diversify the talent pool in these three exciting fields. I'm confident that the Bertelsmann Scholarship Program will empower learners to master new skills and land some of the most exciting and in-demand jobs available today!"

Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (Chinese: 吳恩達; born 1976) is a Chinese-American computer scientist and statistician, focusing on machine learning and AI. Also a business executive and investor in the Silicon Valley, Ng co-founded and led Google Brain and was a former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people. Ng is an adjunct professor at Stanford University (formerly associate professor and Director of its AI Lab). Also a pioneer in online education, Ng co-founded Coursera and deeplearning.ai. With his online courses, he has successfully spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning."

Many UK universities are struggling financially, but there's one option that is rarely discussed: replacing lecturers with artificial intelligence (AI) machines. This might sound like sci-fi – after all, the lists of occupations vulnerable to AI rarely include teaching, which is still seen as too creative for computers. But a growing database of information harvested from online courses – clickstreams, eye-tracking and even emotion-detection – could make AI lecturers a common feature in the near future. Forget robo-lecturers whirring away in front of whiteboards: AI teaching will mostly happen online, in 24/7 virtual classrooms. AI machines will learn to teach by ferreting out complex patterns in student behaviour – what you click, how long you watch, what mistakes you make, even what time of day you work best.