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:
Machine learning can be used in classification Images & objects in an image
Ship
Water
Rock
Iron object
Fiber Object etc.,
Does this really help?
The main advantage of ML
Learning and writing an algorithm
Its easy for human brain but it is tough for a machine. It takes
some time and good amount of training data for machine to
accurately classify objects
Implementation and automation
This is easy for a machine. Once learnt a machine can process one
million images without any fatigue where as human brain can’t
That’s why ML with big data is a deadly combination
Applications of Machine Learning
1. Banking / Telecom / Retail
Identify:
Prospective customers
Dissatisfied customers
Good customers
Bad payers
Obtain:
More effective advertising
Less credit risk
Fewer fraud
Decreased churn rate
2. Biomedical / Biometrics
Medicine:
Screening
Diagnosis and prognosis
Drug discovery
Security:
Face recognition
Signature / fingerprint / iris verification
DNA fingerprinting
3. Computer / Internet
Computer interfaces:
Troubleshooting wizards
Handwriting and speech
Brain waves
Internet
Hit ranking
Spam filtering
Text categorization
Text translation
Recommendation
How exactly do we teach machines?
Teaching the machines involve a structural process where every stage
builds a better version of the machine. For simplification purpose, the
process of teaching machines can broken down into 3 parts:
Basic steps used in Machine Learning
There are 5 basic steps used to perform a machine learning task:
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.
For example: Supervised Learning is used when a marketing company is trying
to find out which customers are likely to churn. We can also use it to predict
the likelihood of occurrence of perils like earthquakes, tornadoes etc. with an
aim to determine the Total Insurance Value. Some examples of algorithms used
are: Nearest neighbour, Naïve Bayes, Decision Trees, Regression etc.
Unsupervised learning / Descriptive models:
It is used to train descriptive models where no target is set and no single feature is important
than the other. The case of unsupervised learning can be: When a retailer wishes to find out
what are the combination of products, customers tends to buy more frequently. Furthermore, in
pharmaceutical industry, unsupervised learning may be used to predict which diseases are
likely to occur along with diabetes. Example of algorithm used here is: K- means Clustering
Algorithm
Reinforcement learning (RL):
It is an example of machine learning where the machine is trained to take specific decisions
based on the business requirement with the sole motto to maximize efficiency (performance).
The idea involved in reinforcement learning is: The machine/ software agent trains itself on a
continual basis based on the environment it is exposed to, and applies it’s enriched knowledge
to solve business problems. This continual learning process ensures less involvement of human
expertise which in turn saves a lot of time!
An example of algorithm used in RL is Markov Decision Process.
RL is learning from interaction
A traffic system can measure the delay of
cars, but not know how to decrease it.
