Big Data: Statistical Inference and Machine Learning - Queensland University of Technology

Why is statistical inference and machine learning approaches important for analysing Big Data? To answer this question, I want to draw your attention to the world's largest coral reef system, and one of Australia's biggest natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is composed of over 2900 reefs and 900 islands, spanning over 2300km, and is one of the most diverse ecosystems on the Earth. However, because of its large size, monitoring and predicting different trends in the reef is really difficult. For example, here at QUT we're using machine learning approaches to design robots to seek out and control the damaging crown-of-thorns starfish. In this course we show you how to apply certain predictive analysis, dimension reduction, clustering, and machine learning techniques to analyse big data and make informed decisions.