What puts former criminals on the right track? How can we prevent heart disease? Can Twitter predict election outcomes? What does a violent brain look like? How many social classes does 21st century society have? Are hospitals spending too much on health care, or too little?

Statistical learning is the art and science of tackling questions like these by analysing data. Just as cartographers make maps to see what a country looks like, data analysts make graphics that reveal hidden structures in the data. And just as doctors diagnose sick patients and advise healthy ones on how to stay healthy, data analysts predict the consequences of actions and/or events so we can act on that knowledge. Methods from statistics, data mining, and machine learning play an important part in this process.

The course has a strong practical character; the focus is not on the mathematics behind the methods but on the principles that make them work. Participants learn how to apply these methods to real data and how to interpret the results. The course covers both classical and modern topics in data analysis.

Application deadline: 4 July 2022