Introduction to Machine Learning for Economists and Business Analysts

The course provides an introduction to machine learning methods. Supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods as well as reinforcement learning algorithms are covered. The focus of the lecture is on supervised machine learning methods, which include penalised regression methods, tree-based methods and neural networks. The unsupervised machine learning methods that are discussed include clustering and principal component analysis. Bandit algorithms are an example of reinforcement learning algorithms. The lectures are accompanied by coding sessions in which the machine learning methods are applied to real-life economic and business problems (using the open source software R).