Description In the information age, data is all around us. Within this data are answers to compelling questions across many societal domains (politics, business, science, etc.). But if you had access to a large dataset, would you be able to find the answers you seek? This course, part of the Data Science MicroMasters program, will…
Description The job of a data scientist is to glean knowledge from complex and noisy datasets. Reasoning about uncertainty is inherent in the analysis of noisy data. Probability and Statistics provide the mathematical foundation for such reasoning. In this course, part of the Data Science MicroMasters program, you will learn the foundations of probability and…
Description In data science, data is called “big” if it cannot fit into the memory of a single standard laptop or workstation. The analysis of big datasets requires using a cluster of tens, hundreds or thousands of computers. Effectively using such clusters requires the use of distributed files systems, such as the Hadoop Distributed File…
Description Everyone has an opinion on parenting – where babies should sleep, what they should eat, and whether parents should spank, scold, or praise. What’s more, the media often offers support for whichever opinions appear most popular at any given time. This leaves those of us who like to base our decisions on firm, provable facts feeling…
Description If you have ever used a navigation service to find the optimal route and estimate time to destination, you’ve used algorithms on graphs. Graphs arise in various real-world situations, as there are road networks, water and electricity supply networks, computer networks and, most recently, social networks! If you’re looking for the fastest time to…
Description Step into the area of more complex problems and learn advanced algorithms to help solve them. This course, part of the Algorithms and Data Structures MicroMasters program, discusses inherently hard problems that you will come across in the real-world that do not have a known provably efficient algorithm, known as NP-Complete problems. You will…
Description The world and internet are full of textual information. We search for information using textual queries and read websites, books and e-mails. These are all strings from a computer science point of view. To make sense of all this information and make search efficient, search engines use many string algorithms. Moreover, the emerging field…
Description If you look at two genes that serve the same purpose in two different species, how can you rigorously compare these genes in order to see how they have evolved away from each other? In the first part of the course, part of the Algorithms and Data Structures MicroMasters program, we will see how…
Description In this course, part of the Algorithms and Data Structures MicroMasters program, you will learn how graph algorithms are used in two fundamental problems in modern biology: How do we sequence a genome? How do we construct an evolutionary “Tree of Life?” In the first part of the course, you will learn how genome…
Description Building a fully-fledged algorithm to assemble genomes from DNA fragments on a real dataset is an enormous challenge with major demand in the multi-billion dollar biotech industry. In this capstone project, we will take the training wheels off and let you design your own optimized software program for genome sequencing. This big data challenge…