Machine Learning Notes (Basics to Advanced)
Title: Machine Learning Notes with Examples – Beginner to Expert
Table of Contents
1. What is Machine Learning?
2. Types of ML (Supervised, Unsupervised, Reinforcement)
3. Key Algorithms
o Linear Regression
o Logistic Regression
o Decision Trees
o Random Forests
o Support Vector Machines
o K-Means Clustering
o Neural Networks
4. Model Evaluation Metrics (Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F1-Score, ROC)
5. Overfitting & Underfitting
6. Feature Engineering Basics
7. Real-Life Applications
8. Hands-On Mini Examples with Python (code snippets)
9. ML Interview Q&A Cheat Sheet
1. Introduction to Machine Learning
Definition: Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that
enables systems to learn from data and improve their performance without being
explicitly programmed.
Key Idea: Instead of hard-coded rules, ML models find patterns in data to make
predictions or decisions.
Example:
Rule-based: "If salary > 50k, approve loan."
ML-based: Train a model on historical loan data (income, age, credit score → loan
approval) to automatically learn the decision boundary.
2. Types of Machine Learning
(a) Supervised Learning
Labeled data (X → Y)
Model learns a mapping between input and output.
Examples:
o Predicting house price (Regression)
o Classifying emails as spam/not spam (Classification)
Algorithms: Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forest, SVM,
Neural Networks.
(b) Unsupervised Learning
Unlabeled data (only X).
Model groups or structures the data.
Examples:
o Customer segmentation in marketing (Clustering)
o Topic modeling in documents
Algorithms: K-Means, Hierarchical Clustering, PCA (Dimensionality Reduction).
(c) Reinforcement Learning
Learning through trial and error with feedback (rewards/penalties).
Examples:
o Self-driving cars
o Game playing (AlphaGo, Chess)
Concepts: Agent, Environment, Actions, Rewards, Policy.
3. Key Algorithms
🔹 Linear Regression
Predicts continuous values.
Equation:
y=β0+β1x1+β2x2+...+βnxn+ϵy = \beta_0 + \beta_1x_1 + \beta_2x_2 + ... + \beta_nx_n + \
epsilony=β0+β1x1+β2x2+...+βnxn+ϵ
Example: Predicting house price based on size, location, and number of rooms.
🔹 Logistic Regression
For classification problems (binary/multi-class).
Uses sigmoid function:
P(y=1∣x)=11+e−(β0+β1x)P(y=1|x) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-(\beta_0 + \beta_1x)}}P(y=1∣x)=1+e−(β0
+β1x)1
Example: Predict if a student passes (yes/no) based on study hours.
🔹 Decision Trees
Splits data into nodes based on conditions.
Easy to interpret, prone to overfitting.
Example: Loan approval based on age, salary, credit history.
🔹 Random Forest
Ensemble of decision trees (bagging technique).
Reduces variance → better accuracy.
Example: Predicting customer churn.
🔹 Support Vector Machine (SVM)
Finds the best hyperplane that separates classes.
Uses kernels for non-linear classification.
Example: Classifying images of cats vs dogs.
🔹 K-Means Clustering
Groups data into k clusters based on similarity.
Steps:
1. Choose k cluster centers
2. Assign points to nearest center
3. Recompute centers until convergence
Example: Customer segmentation by buying behavior.
🔹 Neural Networks
Layers of neurons connected via weights.
Used in deep learning for images, speech, text.
Example: Face recognition, ChatGPT.
4. Model Evaluation Metrics
For Regression:
Mean Absolute Error (MAE)
Mean Squared Error (MSE)
Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE)
R² Score
For Classification:
Accuracy = (TP + TN) / (Total)
Precision = TP / (TP + FP)
Recall = TP / (TP + FN)
F1 Score = 2 × (Precision × Recall) / (Precision + Recall)
ROC Curve & AUC
5. Overfitting vs Underfitting
Overfitting: Model learns noise, high training accuracy but poor test accuracy.
Underfitting: Model is too simple, performs poorly on both train and test.
Solutions:
Cross-validation
Regularization (L1, L2)
Pruning trees
More training data
6. Feature Engineering & Preprocessing
Handling missing values (mean, median, mode imputation)
Scaling data (Standardization, Normalization)
Encoding categorical variables (One-Hot, Label Encoding)
Feature selection (Remove redundant variables, PCA)
7. ML Workflow
1. Define problem
2. Collect & clean data
3. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
4. Feature engineering
5. Model selection
6. Training & hyperparameter tuning
7. Evaluation & validation
8. Deployment
9. Monitoring & improvement
8. Real-Life Applications
Finance → Credit risk scoring, fraud detection
Healthcare → Disease prediction, drug discovery
Retail → Recommendation engines
Transportation → Route optimization, autonomous cars
Marketing → Customer segmentation, churn prediction
