A 101 to Machine Learning using Python

Chris Allison

Senior Coordinator, GC2.0 Tools at Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Machine Learning, a method of teaching computers to learn and make predictions based on data without being explicitly programmed, is a core part of predictive analytics and key technologies like image recognition, self-driving cars, unsupervised data analytics and search / recommendation engines. Featured in more MOOC’s than you can shake a stick at, machine learning is taking off – and Python has one of the top ML ecosystems around! Chris Allison will present an introductory primer on machine learning using Python’s Scikit-Learn and Gensim. Code and examples included!

As a driven, passionate and creative leader and change agent, Chris Allison’s career, skills and experiences span across public service, private interests and personal goals. Chris’ goal is to reimagine and revitalize the public service – transforming it into an organization that can meet and exceed the needs and expectations of Canadians. Over the past 15 years Chris has worked on immigration enforcement, investigated war crimes, patrolled Toronto with the Toronto Police Service, conducted surveillance and counter smuggling activities with as an RCMP officer, participated in public relations duties in Japan, managed national security activities with the Canada Border Services Agency, developed legislation, regulations and policy on import, export and cross-border law enforcement operations, contributed to the re-writing of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, created and lead a community of passionate managers in Public Safety Canada, worked to improve the traveler experience with the CBSA and currently lead the Government of Canada’s enterprise social network and wiki – working to build a single, collaborative and high performing public service to better serve Canadians. Driven and imaginative, Chris has reverse mentored three Deputy Ministers on innovation and technology on the Deputy Minister Committee on Policy Innovation, reimagined and built new ways to improve the traveler experience and acted as a catalyst for change – driving innovation in policy thinking, service delivery, information management and collaboration. An avid Python developer, Chris has built web apps, event simulations, conducted social network analysis, graphed and analyzed social media, analyzed big data with Spark, built machine learning classifiers and used natural language analysis to directly improve his organizations. As per his Twitter bio, Chris is focused on GoC leadership, community, culture, creativity and innovation. He is a geek, gamer, Python developer and storyteller.

Agenda
11:00 – 11:30 Refreshments and Networking
11:30 – 12:00 Lunch and Welcoming Remarks
12:00 – 13:00 Seminar
13:00 – 13:30 Questions and Networking