Machine Learning
Machine Learning
Machine Learning
Herbert Alexander Simon:
Learning is any process by
which a system improves
performance from experience.
Machine Learning is
concerned with computer
programs that automatically
improve their performance
through experience.
Herbert Simon
Why Machine Learning?
Develop systems that can automatically adapt and customize
themselves to individual users.
o Personalized news or mail filter
Discover new knowledge from large databases (data mining).
o Market basket analysis (e.g. diapers and Fruits)
Ability to mimic human and replace certain monotonous tasks
which require some intelligence.
o like recognizing handwritten characters
Develop systems that are too difficult/expensive to construct
manually because they require specific detailed skills or knowledge
tuned to a specific task (knowledge engineering bottleneck)
Example: Classification using ML
Image processing:
1. Collecting data: Be it the raw data from excel, access, text files etc., this step
(gathering past data) forms the foundation of the future learning. The better
the variety, density and volume of relevant data, better the learning prospects
for the machine becomes.
2. Preparing the data: Any analytical process thrives on the quality of the data
used. One needs to spend time determining the quality of data and then
taking steps for fixing issues such as missing data and treatment of
outliers. Exploratory analysis is perhaps one method to study the nuances of
the data in details thereby burgeoning the nutritional content of the data.
3. Training a model: This step involves choosing the appropriate algorithm
and representation of data in the form of the model. The cleaned data is split
into two parts – train and test (proportion depending on the prerequisites);
the first part (training data) is used for developing the model. The second
part (test data), is used as a reference.
4. Evaluating the model: To test the accuracy, the second part of the data
(holdout / test data) is used. This step determines the precision in the choice
of the algorithm based on the outcome. A better test to check accuracy of
model is to see its performance on data which was not used at all during
model build.
5. Improving the performance: This step might involve choosing a different
model altogether or introducing more variables to augment the efficiency.
That’s why significant amount of time needs to be spent in data collection
and preparation.
The Types of Machine Learning Algorithms
Supervised Learning / Predictive models:
Predictive model as the name suggests is used to predict the future outcome
based on the historical data. Predictive models are normally given clear
instructions right from the beginning as in what needs to be learnt and how it
needs to be learnt. These class of learning algorithms are termed as Supervised
Learning.