Course Syllabus

Advanced Data Analytics • HEC Lausanne • Fall 2025

2025

Advanced Data Analytics

Machine Learning for Economics & Finance

📋 Professor's Syllabus

View Materials →

📍 Meeting Time & Location

Time: Mondays, 10:15 - 12:00 (Lecture) • 16:30 - 18:00 (Practice)

Location: Internef 126 (Morning) • Anthropole 3185 (Afternoon)

Course Overview

Goal

Learning Objectives

Gain practical familiarity with current computer-aided data analysis and machine learning approaches.

Format

Course Structure

14-week Master's level course: Three 45-minute lectures + 45-minute hands-on session each Monday.

Platform

Nuvolos Cloud

All materials distributed via cloud platform. Enroll here.

Support

TA Sessions

Mondays 17:15-18:00 with Maria Pia Lombardo. Fridays by request.

Skills You'll Master

🧠

Supervised Learning

Regression • Classification • Deep Neural Networks

📊

Unsupervised Learning

Clustering • PCA • Gaussian Mixture Models

🎮

Reinforcement Learning

Q-Learning • Portfolio optimization • If time permits

🤖

Deep Learning

TensorFlow • PyTorch • RNNs • LSTMs

🎯

Applied ML

Stock prediction • NLP • Real-world applications

Course Schedule

Detailed weekly materials are available in the Weekly Materials Hub.

Part I

Foundations

Weeks 1-5
ML Intro Python Crash Course Linear Regression Generative AI & Agents
Part II

Core ML

Weeks 6-10
Classification Deep Learning TensorFlow/PyTorch RNNs/LSTMs Gaussian Processes
Part III

Advanced Topics

Weeks 11-14
Dimensionality Reduction Clustering Reinforcement Learning Capstone Projects

Assessment & Grading

🎯

Capstone Project

Individual data science project • 10-page report • GitHub repository • Video presentation (max 10 min)

View Project Guidelines →
📝

No Exams

Assessment based entirely on demonstrating understanding through the capstone project

📝

Exercise Sheets

8 problem sets distributed throughout the semester for practice and learning

Course References & Textbooks

Statistical Learning

An Introduction to Statistical Learning

James, Witten, Hastie, Tibshirani • Springer

statlearning.com

Deep Learning

Deep Learning

Goodfellow, Bengio, Courville • MIT Press

deeplearningbook.org

Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Christopher Bishop • Springer

Download PDF

Mathematics

Mathematics for Machine Learning

Essential mathematical foundations

mml-book.github.io

Python

Python Programming

QuantEcon lectures on Python

quantecon.org

Support

Course Resources

Questions & Materials

Google Doc