Vikash Mansinghka, Research Scientist
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Limited to 20 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Prereq: Familiarity with Python
Probabilistic inference is a widely-used, mathematically rigorous approach for interpreting ambiguous information using models that are uncertain and/or incomplete. It has become central to multiple fields, from big data analytics to robotics and AI to computational modeling of the mind and brain. However, it currently requires deep technical expertise to use. Models and inference algorithms are difficult to communicate, design, implement, validate, and optimize, and inference often appears to be fundamentally intractable. The emerging field of probabilistic programming aims to make modeling and inference broadly accessible to non-experts, especially to facilitate data analysis, and to enable experts to tackle problems that are currently infeasible, especially in machine intelligence.
This class offers an introduction to probabilistic programming, emphasizing applications to Bayesian data analysis. The course will provide hands-on experience with the Venture and BayesDB platforms. Students will learn how to use probabilistic programming for data exploration, cleaning, confirmatory analysis, and predictive modeling. Students will also be exposed to techniques for writing custom models and inference programs that are suitable for more complex problems.
(Students should be familiar with basic programming and statistical concepts. Familiarity with Python is required)
Sponsor(s): Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Contact: Rax Dillon, N/A, N/A, rax@mit.edu
Jan/05 | Tue | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-3015 |
Jan/07 | Thu | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-3015 |
Jan/19 | Tue | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-3015 |
Jan/26 | Tue | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-3015 |
Vikash Mansinghka - Research Scientist
Jan/12 | Tue | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-1015 |
Jan/14 | Thu | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-1015 |
Jan/21 | Thu | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-1015 |
Jan/28 | Thu | 02:00PM-04:00PM | 46-1015 |
Vikash Mansinghka - Research Scientist