Back to Machine Learning Foundations for Product Managers
Duke University

Machine Learning Foundations for Product Managers

In this first course of the AI Product Management Specialization offered by Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, you will build a foundational understanding of what machine learning is, how it works and when and why it is applied. To successfully manage an AI team or product and work collaboratively with data scientists, software engineers, and customers you need to understand the basics of machine learning technology. This course provides a non-coding introduction to machine learning, with focus on the process of developing models, ML model evaluation and interpretation, and the intuition behind common ML and deep learning algorithms. The course will conclude with a hands-on project in which you will have a chance to train and optimize a machine learning model on a simple real-world problem. At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to: 1) Explain how machine learning works and the types of machine learning 2) Describe the challenges of modeling and strategies to overcome them 3) Identify the primary algorithms used for common ML tasks and their use cases 4) Explain deep learning and its strengths and challenges relative to other forms of machine learning 5) Implement best practices in evaluating and interpreting ML models

Status: Decision Tree Learning
Status: Convolutional Neural Networks
IntermediateCourse16 hours

Featured reviews

KV

5.0Reviewed Jun 23, 2023

Great way to get started and introduced to concepts. Project work ensure it covers all the topics taught in the course. Great way to recap and apply concepts to play.

AA

5.0Reviewed Aug 23, 2025

Excellent course, very interesting, useful, well balanced. Very skilled lecturer and the material is easy to understand and fruitful for the graded assignment provided.

JE

4.0Reviewed Dec 16, 2023

I thought the course had a good pace and was informative. I should have took advantage of the discussion forums more to ask some questions. Doing the project brought even more questions.

NR

5.0Reviewed Mar 7, 2025

A great course for Project and Product Managers. I found the practice questions very effective to think on practical aspects. The content is comprehensive. Kudos to the Trainer.

RR

5.0Reviewed Jan 7, 2024

As a foundation is pretty good. It can be a bit difficult the part of the algebra and the final project, but they provided instructions on how to do it. Just follow the instructions.

TT

4.0Reviewed Dec 23, 2025

I think the course is a little but technical for product managers, I would expect more examples from the real life to be used in industry and less mathematical calculations

LS

5.0Reviewed Apr 28, 2023

Good introduction to Machine Learning, which developed further with the ML course project. Overall good learning experience and continuing on with the next course in the specialisation.

TR

5.0Reviewed Mar 15, 2026

One of the best courses I have taken on introduction Machine Learning. I enjoyed taking it as it provided good foundation on ML and put everything into perspective.

SS

5.0Reviewed Oct 16, 2023

Project at end of program was very good learning opportunity. Well done overall !! Highly recommend for non DS professionals working closely with DS projects.

AK

4.0Reviewed Mar 15, 2022

The training provides a good overview of ML concepts. At the same time pre-project data quality review and initial data analysis could have a more extensive coverage from my point of view

OF

5.0Reviewed Mar 31, 2024

Sometimes I wish I had seen a simpler example or the same concept explained in two different ways. I had to resort to Gemini and Chat-Gpt to exercise some concepts.

MP

5.0Reviewed Dec 17, 2023

Fantastic course as a starting point on Machine Learning Foundations, fully recommend for beginners, especially if you are not familiar on statistics or coding...

All reviews

Showing: 20 of 243

Stephen Waters
2.0
Reviewed May 4, 2023
Ramanan K
1.0
Reviewed Feb 21, 2022
Amr
1.0
Reviewed Jan 28, 2022
Umberto DAlessandro
4.0
Reviewed Jan 11, 2024
Maureen Kornienko
3.0
Reviewed Sep 2, 2023
Anne-Laure JALLON
2.0
Reviewed Jan 3, 2023
Justin Scott
2.0
Reviewed Apr 6, 2024
Michael Hatton
4.0
Reviewed Oct 31, 2022
Peter Vogel
2.0
Reviewed Nov 10, 2023
Tom Martin
2.0
Reviewed Feb 15, 2024
melissa gariepy
1.0
Reviewed Apr 23, 2024
Le Guillou Aurélie
4.0
Reviewed Sep 30, 2022
Sena Besikci
2.0
Reviewed Dec 26, 2024
Antonio Marinetto
5.0
Reviewed Feb 12, 2024
Craig Zamboni
5.0
Reviewed Mar 17, 2023
Wolf Zabka
5.0
Reviewed May 9, 2022
Aarks Mukkamala
5.0
Reviewed Feb 8, 2023
Naveed Rana
5.0
Reviewed Mar 8, 2025
Talat Khan
5.0
Reviewed Jun 25, 2024
MANIKANDAN PY
5.0
Reviewed Dec 18, 2023