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In this course, you will learn about best practices and recommendations for machine learning (ML). The course explores how to roadmap for integrating ML into your business processes, explores requirements to determine if ML is the appropriate solution to a business problem, and describes what components are needed for a successful organizational adoption of ML.

We recommend that attendees of this course have:

• Basic knowledge of computers and computer systems

• Some basic knowledge of the concept of machine learning 

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What's inside

Syllabus

Traffic lights

Read about what's good
what should give you pause
and possible dealbreakers
Taught by AWS instructors, who are recognized for their work in the field of machine learning
Explores various aspects and applications of machine learning across different industries and domains
Strong emphasis on best practices and recommendations for implementing machine learning solutions effectively
Teaches learners how to evaluate if machine learning is the right solution for specific business problems
Covers key considerations for successful organizational adoption of machine learning
Designed for learners with basic knowledge of computers and machine learning concepts

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Reviews summary

Strategic machine learning for business leaders

According to students, this course is a highly valuable resource for business and technical decision makers seeking to understand Machine Learning's strategic implications. Learners praise its ability to demystify complex ML concepts and bridge the gap between technical details and business application. The course is particularly strong in providing a high-level overview focused on strategic decision-making and organizational adoption, making it ideal for non-technical managers and leaders. While a significant majority found it incredibly beneficial, some with prior ML knowledge noted it could be too introductory or general, wishing for more in-depth practical examples or advanced frameworks. Overall, it's not a coding course, fulfilling its promise to equip leaders to speak intelligently about ML and guide strategic initiatives.
Best suited for those new to ML or in strategic business roles.
"A fantastic overview for non-technical managers. Highly recommend for business strategy."
"Good for absolute beginners, maybe."
"It demystifies the jargon and provides a clear framework for thinking about ML."
Successfully connects ML's technical aspects to practical business needs.
"As a technical manager, I found this course excellent for bridging the gap between deep technical ML concepts and their real-world business implications."
"It helped me frame conversations with our data science team."
"I found the modules on identifying ML opportunities and organizational adoption very helpful."
Emphasizes ML's impact on business strategy and decision-making.
"This course is incredibly valuable for anyone in a leadership role trying to understand how ML impacts business."
"It really clarified the 'why' behind ML investments. The case studies were very relevant."
"Perfect for a non-technical leader who needs to understand the landscape of ML. Provides a clear framework for thinking about ML in a business context."
Some practical examples felt generic, lacking industry-specific detail.
"Some parts felt a bit too general, and I wish there were more practical examples of ML project implementation challenges specific to different industries."
"The only minor critique is that some of the examples felt a bit generic, but still applicable."
"I didn't feel like I gained a lot of new, actionable insights."
May be too introductory for those with prior ML knowledge.
"While the course provides a decent overview, I felt it lacked depth in certain areas. For someone with a basic ML background, it felt a bit too introductory."
"Unfortunately, it was too superficial for my needs. It mostly covered basic definitions and concepts that I already knew."
"Not enough actionable advice for experienced professionals."

Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Machine Learning for Business & Technical Decision Makers with these activities:
Review Machine Learning Concepts
Reviewing machine learning concepts will help you build a stronger foundation and better prepare you for the course.
Browse courses on Machine Learning
Show steps
  • Read introductory articles or blog posts about machine learning.
  • Watch videos or tutorials on machine learning basics.
  • Complete practice exercises or quizzes to test your understanding.
Join a Study Group or Discussion Forum
Participating in a study group or discussion forum will allow you to connect with other students, share knowledge, and clarify concepts.
Show steps
  • Identify study groups or discussion forums related to machine learning.
  • Join the group or forum and actively participate in discussions.
  • Ask questions, share insights, and help others.
Follow Tutorials on Machine Learning Algorithms
Following tutorials on machine learning algorithms will help you develop practical skills and deepen your understanding of different algorithms.
Show steps
  • Identify machine learning algorithms that are relevant to the course.
  • Find tutorials or online courses that cover these algorithms.
  • Follow the tutorials step-by-step and implement the algorithms.
  • Test the algorithms on sample datasets.
Three other activities
Expand to see all activities and additional details
Show all six activities
Solve Machine Learning Practice Problems
Solving machine learning practice problems will improve your problem-solving skills and reinforce your knowledge.
Browse courses on Coding Challenges
Show steps
  • Find practice problems or coding challenges related to machine learning.
  • Attempt to solve the problems independently.
  • Compare your solutions with others or seek help if needed.
Create a Machine Learning Project Presentation
Creating a machine learning project presentation will help you synthesize your knowledge, develop communication skills, and showcase your understanding.
Show steps
  • Choose a machine learning project to work on.
  • Implement the project and collect results.
  • Create a presentation that explains the project, methods, and outcomes.
  • Present your project to your peers or instructors.
Start a Personal Machine Learning Project
Starting a personal machine learning project will allow you to apply your skills, explore your interests, and build a portfolio.
Show steps
  • Identify a problem or domain you are interested in.
  • Gather data and explore different machine learning algorithms.
  • Implement and evaluate a machine learning model.
  • Deploy or share your project.

Career center

Learners who complete Machine Learning for Business & Technical Decision Makers will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

Reading list

We've selected 49 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Machine Learning for Business & Technical Decision Makers.
The definitive benchmark textbook of modern artificial intelligence, rigorously unifying search algorithms, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, and machine learning into an elegant, coherent agent-based framework.
The premier applied machine learning masterwork, taking practitioners through intuitive concept breakdowns, production-grade Scikit-Learn workflows, and deep neural architecture implementations.
A timeless mathematical masterpiece that provides an uncompromising Bayesian and probabilistic foundation for linear classifiers, graphical models, kernel methods, and sampling algorithms.
The third edition of the essential guide to data wrangling with pandas, NumPy, and Jupyter in Python. Updated for newer versions of the libraries, this book remains a core resource for anyone performing data analysis in Python. It widely used textbook and reference for its clear explanations and practical examples.
A monumental foundational text establishing the mathematical, algorithmic, and statistical principles of modern deep neural networks, from linear algebra and optimization to convolutional and sequence modeling architectures.
The definitive mathematical and theoretical canon of statistical learning, establishing the rigorous analytical foundations of regularized regression, tree ensembles, and high-dimensional inference.
A distilled practitioner field guide outlining best practices for the entire machine learning lifecycle, from problem formulation and feature engineering to model deployment and monitoring.
Guides engineers step-by-step through implementing, training, and fine-tuning complete generative transformer architectures in pure PyTorch, providing crystal-clear low-level insight into modern foundation models.
Delivers an end-to-end systems architecture guide for building reliable production ML systems, addressing data engineering trade-offs, real-time feature computation, and model drift mitigation.
Bridges linear algebra, multivariable calculus, vector geometry, and probability directly to fundamental machine learning algorithms like PCA, Gaussian mixture models, and support vector machines.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment workflows.
Instructs data scientists on applied model evaluation, cross-validation, hyperparameter tuning, and pipeline construction through Scikit-Learn maintainers Andreas Müller and Sarah Guido.
Provides a foundational understanding of the fundamental principles of data science and the data-analytic thinking necessary for extracting value from data in a business context. It is highly relevant for undergraduate business analytics programs and working professionals. It serves as a useful reference for understanding the business applications of data analysis and is commonly used as a textbook.
Addresses the learning strategies by describing the models of a number of different algorithms used in machine learning. Every chapter addresses a different learning algorithm and contains detailed diagrams and real-world applications.
Demystifies practical transformer model implementation through the Hugging Face ecosystem, demonstrating how to fine-tune, optimize, and deploy attention architectures across diverse natural language processing and understanding tasks.
Provides a comprehensive overview of statistical learning, a subfield of machine learning that deals with supervised learning. It is written by three of the leading researchers in the field.
Delivers battle-tested operational patterns for serving foundation models, addressing GPU cluster throughput, semantic caching, automated evaluation benchmarks, and continuous latency minimization.
Focuses on the crucial skill of communicating insights from data effectively through compelling visualizations. is highly relevant for all levels, emphasizing the importance of clear and impactful data presentation. It is valuable additional reading that complements technical data analysis skills.
Investigates the engineering realities of running automated ML pipelines in production, addressing data drift detection, automated retraining loops, telemetry infrastructure, and continuous validation.
Details an applied architectural methodology for running high-performance open-weights models on local workstations, tackling quantization fidelity, memory bandwidth limits, and prompt assembly trade-offs.
Details cloud-native DevOps architectures for orchestrating automated machine learning lifecycles, integrating CI/CD triggers, model registry synchronization, and automated hyperparameter sweep workers.
Bridges the gap between statistical theory and its practical application in data science using R and Python. It focuses on the statistical concepts most relevant to data scientists and provides code examples. It's a useful reference and learning resource for those applying statistics in their work.
Offers a new way of thinking about data science and ethics informed by intersectional feminist thought. It challenges existing power structures within data and explores how data can be used to work towards justice. It's highly relevant for contemporary discussions around fairness and bias in data analysis.
Offers a rigorous theoretical foundation for reasoning under uncertainty, combining graph theory and probability distributions to model complex high-dimensional dependencies across autonomous intelligent systems.
Is an excellent starting point for anyone new to data analysis or statistics. It demystifies core statistical concepts without relying heavily on mathematical formulas, making it highly accessible for high school and undergraduate students. It provides a strong foundation in the intuition behind statistical analysis and helps readers understand how data can be used and misused. This is valuable background reading that builds prerequisite knowledge.
Introduces core computational linguistics concepts and practical tokenization, tagging, and syntactic parsing workflows through clear Python examples, establishing strong fundamentals for language analysis.
Provides a guide to creating effective and aesthetically pleasing data visualizations. It delves into the principles behind good visualization design, helping readers make informed choices about how to represent their data. It valuable reference for anyone creating visualizations, from students to professionals.
Synthesizes the five foundational tribes of machine learning into a unified conceptual framework, illuminating how symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers approach intelligence.
Presents the foundational treatise on Markov decision processes, temporal-difference learning, and policy gradient methods that underpin autonomous decision-making and modern post-training alignment.
Teaches probability and statistics using a computational approach with Python. It's ideal for students and professionals with programming experience who want to understand statistical concepts by doing. It helps solidify understanding through hands-on application.
Combines interactive Jupyter notebooks with rigorous mathematical explanations to teach machine learning practitioners how modern neural architectures are designed, implemented, and trained.
SQL fundamental skill for data analysis, and this book delves into advanced techniques for working with data in databases. It's essential for anyone who needs to retrieve and manipulate data stored in relational databases. It serves as a valuable reference for more complex data extraction and transformation tasks.
Covers the topic of machine learning for text data. Text data special type of data that has unique characteristics. This book shows how to use machine learning algorithms to process text data.
Covers the topic of machine learning for data streams. Data streams are continuous flows of data that are too large to be stored in memory. This book shows how to use machine learning algorithms to process data streams in real time.
Covers the topic of sparsity in machine learning. Sparsity property of data that has many zeros. This book shows how to use sparsity to improve the performance of machine learning algorithms.
A timeless classic that remains highly relevant today. exposes common ways statistics can be manipulated or misinterpreted, fostering a critical eye essential for anyone working with data. It's valuable for all levels, from high school to professional, as it highlights the importance of data integrity and ethical considerations. This serves as crucial additional reading to develop data literacy.
Analyzes the geopolitical, macroeconomic, and industrial waves of artificial intelligence commercialization, assessing how data abundance and algorithmic disruption redefine global economic competition.
Explores the world of prediction and forecasting across various fields, demonstrating how data analysis and statistical modeling are used in practice. It's particularly engaging for undergraduate and graduate students interested in the application of data analysis in real-world scenarios. It adds breadth by showcasing diverse applications and the challenges involved in making accurate predictions.
Provides a high-level overview of the data science process, from asking questions to interpreting results. It focuses on the principles and concepts rather than specific tools, making it suitable for a broad audience. It helps in gaining a broad understanding of the data analysis workflow.
A seminal work on information design and data visualization. While not specific to data analysis techniques, its principles are fundamental for effectively presenting data. It's a classic that influences how we think about visual communication of quantitative information.
While more focused on the engineering aspects of data systems, this book provides a deep understanding of the underlying infrastructure for data analysis. It's particularly valuable for graduate students and professionals involved in building and maintaining data pipelines and databases. It adds significant depth to understanding the data landscape.

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