Scalable Machine Learning on Big Data using Apache Spark (Coursera)

Offered by IBM,
Scalable Machine Learning on Big Data using Apache Spark (Coursera)

This course will empower you with the skills to scale data science and machine learning (ML) tasks on Big Data sets using Apache Spark. Most real world machine learning work involves very large data sets that go beyond the CPU, memory and storage limitations of a single computer. Apache Spark is an open source framework that leverages cluster computing and distributed storage to process extremely large data sets in an efficient and cost effective manner. Therefore an applied knowledge of working with Apache Spark is a great asset and potential differentiator for a Machine Learning engineer.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  • gain a practical understanding of Apache Spark, and apply it to solve machine learning problems involving both small and big data
  • understand how parallel code is written, capable of running on thousands of CPUs.
  • make use of large scale compute clusters to apply machine learning algorithms on Petabytes of data using Apache SparkML Pipelines.
  • eliminate out-of-memory errors generated by traditional machine learning frameworks when data doesn’t fit in a computer's main memory
  • test thousands of different ML models in parallel to find the best performing one – a technique used by many successful Kagglers
  • (Optional) run SQL statements on very large data sets using Apache SparkSQL and the Apache Spark DataFrame API.

Enrol now to learn the machine learning techniques for working with Big Data that have been successfully applied by companies like Alibaba, Apple, Amazon, Baidu, eBay, IBM, NASA, Samsung, SAP, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!, Zalando and many others.
NOTE: You will practice running machine learning tasks hands-on on an Apache Spark cluster provided by IBM at no charge during the course which you can continue to use afterwards.
Course 2 of 6 in the IBM AI Engineering Professional Certificate.

Prerequisites:

  • basic python programming
  • basic machine learning (optional introduction videos are provided in this course as well)
  • basic SQL skills for optional content

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Introduction
This is an introduction to Apache Spark. You'll learn how Apache Spark internally works and how to use it for data processing. RDD, the low level API is introduced in conjunction with parallel programming / functional programming. Then, different types of data storage solutions are contrasted. Finally, Apache Spark SQL and the optimizer Tungsten and Catalyst are explained.

WEEK 2
Scaling Math for Statistics on Apache Spark
Applying basic statistical calculations using the Apache Spark RDD API in order to experience how parallelization in Apache Spark works

WEEK 3
Introduction to Apache SparkML
Understand the concept of machine learning pipelines in order to understand how Apache SparkML works programmatically

WEEK 4
Supervised and Unsupervised learning with SparkML
Apply Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning tasks using SparkML

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Innovative Teaching with ChatGPT (Coursera) Coursera
Vanderbilt University

Innovative Teaching with ChatGPT (Coursera)

Despite what you may have heard, ChatGPT offers exciting possibilities for supporting innovative teaching and personalized education. This course provides practical techniques that any educator, from K-12 to higher education, can use to help support their teaching. No experience with ChatGPT, prompt engineering, or Generative AI is required.

Aug 17th 2026
1 Week
Leveraging Virtual Assistants for Personal Productivity (Coursera) Coursera
Coursera Instructor Network

Leveraging Virtual Assistants for Personal Productivity (Coursera)

In a fast-paced world, managing personal productivity is crucial. This course introduces beginners to the world of virtual assistants and chatbots and how they can be harnessed to enhance personal productivity. Learn how to use these AI-driven tools effectively to streamline tasks, manage time, and boost overall efficiency.

Aug 17th 2026
1 Week
Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications (Coursera) Coursera
UNSW Sydney - University of New South Wales

Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications (Coursera)

Welcome to Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications, in which we explore the nature of imaging the earth's surface from space or from airborne vehicles. This course covers the fundamental nature of remote sensing and the platforms and sensor types used. It also provides an in-depth treatment of the computational algorithms employed in image understanding, ranging from the earliest historically important techniques to more recent approaches based on deep learning.

Aug 17th 2026
13-24 Weeks
Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark (Scala 2 version) (Coursera) Coursera
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark (Scala 2 version) (Coursera)

Manipulating big data distributed over a cluster using functional concepts is rampant in industry, and is arguably one of the first widespread industrial uses of functional ideas. This is evidenced by the popularity of MapReduce and Hadoop, and most recently Apache Spark, a fast, in-memory distributed collections framework written in Scala. In this course, we'll see how the data parallel paradigm can be extended to the distributed case, using Spark throughout.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Machine Learning Introduction for Everyone (Coursera) Coursera
IBM

Machine Learning Introduction for Everyone (Coursera)

This three-module course introduces machine learning and data science for everyone with a foundational understanding of machine learning models. You’ll learn about the history of machine learning, applications of machine learning, the machine learning model lifecycle, and tools for machine learning. You’ll also learn about supervised versus unsupervised learning, classification, regression, evaluating machine learning models, and more.

Aug 17th 2026
3 Weeks
Designing Autonomous AI (Coursera) Coursera
University of Washington,Microsoft

Designing Autonomous AI (Coursera)

When children learn how to hit a baseball, they don’t start with fastballs. Their coaches begin with the basics: how to grip the handle of the bat, where to put their feet and how to keep their eyes on the ball. Similarly, an autonomous AI system needs a subject matter expert (SME) to break a complex process or problem into easier tasks that give the AI important clues about how to find a solution faster.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Introduction to Genomic Technologies (Coursera) Coursera
Johns Hopkins University

Introduction to Genomic Technologies (Coursera)

This course introduces you to the basic biology of modern genomics and the experimental tools that we use to measure it. We'll introduce the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology and cover how next-generation sequencing can be used to measure DNA, RNA, and epigenetic patterns. You'll also get an introduction to the key concepts in computing and data science that you'll need to understand how data from next-generation sequencing experiments are generated and analyzed.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Encoder-Decoder Architecture (Coursera) Coursera
Google Cloud

Encoder-Decoder Architecture (Coursera)

This course gives you a synopsis of the encoder-decoder architecture, which is a powerful and prevalent machine learning architecture for sequence-to-sequence tasks such as machine translation, text summarization, and question answering. You learn about the main components of the encoder-decoder architecture and how to train and serve these models. In the corresponding lab walkthrough, you’ll code in TensorFlow a simple implementation of the encoder-decoder architecture for poetry generation from the beginning.

Aug 17th 2026
1 Week
Applied Text Mining in Python (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Applied Text Mining in Python (Coursera)

This course will introduce the learner to text mining and text manipulation basics. The course begins with an understanding of how text is handled by python, the structure of text both to the machine and to humans, and an overview of the nltk framework for manipulating text. The second week focuses on common manipulation needs, including regular expressions (searching for text), cleaning text, and preparing text for use by machine learning processes. The third week will apply basic natural language processing methods to text, and demonstrate how text classification is accomplished. The final week will explore more advanced methods for detecting the topics in documents and grouping them by similarity (topic modelling).

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Coursera) Coursera
Politecnico di Milano

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (Coursera)

This course deals with the problems created, aggravated or transformed by AI. It is intended to give students a chance to reflect on the ethical, social, and cultural impact of AI by focusing on the issues faced by and brought about by professionals in AI but also by citizens, institutions and societies. The course addresses these topics by means of case studies and examples analyzed in the light of the main ethical frameworks.

Aug 17th 2026
4 Weeks