In the modern era, when globalization is widespread, the intellectual potential of the population has become one of the factors of socio-economic and innovative progress. The integration of Azerbaijan into the civilized world and the provision of socio-economic development in the country depend more on the development of science and education, the level of development of new scientific knowledge, techniques and technologies, etc. Today, the importance of the formation and capitalization of intellectual potential is assessed as a factor influencing competitiveness at various levels of the economy. At the modern stage of the development of the information-knowledge economy society, the assessment of intellectual potential plays an important role in increasing the efficiency of the national economy. In the article, the existing methodical approaches to the evaluation of the intellectual potential of higher education and scientific-research institutions are comparatively analyzed and summarized. Indicators that allow the assessment of intellectual potential in the field of education and science are presented in the form of a table. Based on these indicators, the assessment of intellectual potential was carried out for the first time with one of the approaches considered, and the results were presented. This will support making optimal decisions for the development of intellectual potential.

The accuracy of population forecasts is one of the most important calculations in demography statistics. However, traditional demographic methods used in population projections are tend to produce biased results. The need for accurate prediction of future behavior in a number of areas require the application of reliable and efficient methods. Recently, machine learning (ML) models have emerged as a serious competitor to classical statistical models in the forecasting community. In this study, the performance and capacity of the four different ML models such as Random forest (RF), Decision tree (DT), Linear regression (LR) and K-nearest neighbors (KNN) to the prediction of population has been examined. The aim of the study is to find the best performing regression model among these machine learning algorithms for forecasting of population. The data were collected from the State Statistical Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan website were used for the analysis. We used five metrics such as mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), mean square error (MSE) and R-squared to compare the predictive ability of the models. As the result of the analysis, it has been known that the all ML models showed high results with correlation coefficient of 0.985 - 0.996. Also the KNN and RF prediction models showed the lowest root mean square deviation, means square error and mean absolute error values compared to other models. By effectively using the advantage of the ML algorithms, the forecast of population growth the near future can be observed objectively, and it can provide an objective reference to the strategic planning in the public and private sectors, particularly in education, health and social areas.

For almost two years, the world has been battling a global trouble- the COVID-19 pandemic. The disease, which has spread to about 225 countries around the world, has devastated the healthcare system of even the most developed countries.  Governments have found the only way out is to impose a strict quarantine regime and state of emergency. Scientists immediately began testing the vaccine. Vaccination would still be the only savior of the planet's inhabitants.Because many of these pandemic infections have exactly been prevented thanks to vaccines in the past. Although the reduction in the number of infections after strict quarantine measures allowed the restrictions to be eased, the next wave  was starting soon. This made it necessary the preparation of the vaccine as soon as possible. At the end of last year, the expected news came. Thus, in December 2020, the vaccination process has been launched in a number of countries. Azerbaijan is also one of the first countries to join the vaccination. The vaccination process, which began on January 18, 2021 continues, provided that 4 types of vaccines are available to the population. As a result of vaccination, the epidemiological situation in Azerbaijan is under control, as in many countries. In this article has been attempted to find a correlation between vaccination and COVID-19-confirmed cases and deaths. For this purpose, the k-means cluster-based machine learning method has been used in the Azerbaijan data collection obtained from the GitHub repository of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. This research can benefit governments, stakeholders, and relevant institutions in the health care sector in monitor the vaccination process and more detally assess the epidemiological situation , and make important decisions to control and manage the spread of the disease.