Apologies for cross-postings and to those of you have seen the
associated advertisements in various publications.
The purpose of this message is to remind you about our suite of 2-day or
3-day short courses being run at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
ALL OUR SHORT COURSES INVOLVE HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE OF COMPUTER SOFTWARE
USED WITHIN THE PROGRAMME.
The timetable for the next four short courses is as follows.
7 - 9 September 1999 Dealing with Data
7 - 9 September 1999 Soft Computing
April 2000 Principal Components Analysis and Regression
April 2000 Classification
Details on the first two short courses are as follows.
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7 - 9 September 1999 Dealing with Data (presented by Colin James)
A 3-day course covering the fundamentals of statistics, explaining
underlying principles in a non-technical way.
This course builds up the basic ideas of statistics and data analysis
for delegates with little or no previous knowledge of the subject. It
is also a chance for delegates who "switched off" when they first came
across the subject. Our course develops in a non-technical way, making
use of many numerical examples to explain the underlying principles.
We make extensive use of MINITAB statistical software, although we can
accommodate delegates wishing to be introduced to SAS. This approach
has been extremely successful with delegates (having backgrounds in
chemistry, biology and engineering) on our MSc in Industrial Data
Modelling.
The topics covered will include:
* Discrete and Continuous Data, Sample Measures, Grouped Data, Joint
Frequency Table
* Binomial, Poisson, Normal (Gaussian) and Negative Exponential (Time
to Failure) Distributions
* One and Two Sample Tests of Means, Variances and Proportions
* Confidence Intervals, Power and Determination of Sample Size
* Bivariate and Conditional Concepts, Independence, Covariance,
Correlation Coefficient
* Goodness of Fit Tests and Tests of Independence
* Nonparametric Tests
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7 - 9 September 1999 Soft Computing (presented by Bob John)
A 3-day course covering neural networks, fuzzy logic and genetic
algorithms.
This course provides an appreciation and understanding of some of the
techniques in the area of Soft Computing, which encompasses Artificial
Neural Networks (ANNs), Fuzzy Logic and Genetic Algorithms. These
powerful techniques have been used successfully in a number of areas
where more traditional techniques have either performed badly or been
unsuitable. They are used to tackle real-world problems where robustness
of a solution is important and/or where a problem is imprecise or uses
noisy data.
The course, for which no previous knowledge is assumed, aims to provide
delegates with an understanding of these techniques from a practical
point of view. The emphasis is on the uses of the techniques rather than
on their theoretical under-pinning; in particular, industry standard
software is central to the coverage of ANNs. This approach has been
extremely successful with delegates (having backgrounds in chemistry,
biology and engineering) on our MSc in Industrial Data Modelling.
By the end of the course, delegates should be able to:
* understand the biological motivation behind ANNs;
* develop an appreciation of supervised and unsupervised learning;
* know how the backpropagation algorithm recognises patterns in data;
* use a software package for training ANNs;
* understand the types of problem that are particularly amenable to
treatment using ANNs;
* understand the notion of a fuzzy set; * know the basic operations on
fuzzy sets;
* develop an appreciation of how fuzzy if-then rules can be used in a
computer system;
* gain knowledge of adaptive fuzzy systems;
* understand the basics of a genetic algorithm;
* learn, by example, how genetic algorithms work.
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**Cost**
The fee for each of these 3-day courses is £600 (VAT free), to include
registration, course materials, certificate of attendance, and coffee,
lunch and tea each day.
**Availability**
Numbers for this course are limited to 16.
If you would like to register for either of these courses please contact
myself in the first instance, quoting your name, company, address,
telephone number, fax number and Email address. We have negotiated
reduced rates with three local hotels (Best Western Belmont House Hotel,
Jarvis Grand Hotel and Holiday Inn). Please let me know if you would
like more information.
More short courses are available.
Arrangements can be made to deliver short courses at the premises of an
individual client.
More information can be obtained from myself and/or found on our Web
site at http://www.cms.dmu.ac.uk/Courses/MScIDM/
Feel free to pass this information to whoever you think might be
interested.
Since these short courses have been developed from the material which
forms the basis of our distance learning MSc/PGDip/PGCert/CPD programme
in Industrial Data Modelling it is possible to upgrade any short course
attendance to a full module credit and to register for the Industrial
Data Modelling programme at a later date.
If you would like more information on these or our other short courses
(or our distance learning MSc programme in Industrial Data Modelling)
just let me know.
All the best.
Colin.
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Colin James
Programme Director - Industrial Data Modelling
Department of Medical Statistics
Faculty of Computing Sciences and Engineering
De Montfort University Phone ............ (+44) (0)116-250-6147
The Gateway Fax .............. (+44) (0)116-250-6114
Leicester LE1 9BH Email(Personal) ........... [log in to unmask]
UK Email(IDM) .......... [log in to unmask]
http://www.cms.dmu.ac.uk/Courses/MScIDM/
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