Machine Learning

Have you ever wondered what machine learning is? 

If you look at image below you find that it is branch of AI that involves in training computers to make intelligent decision based on the input data, and this is done by extensive training of your program just like you would train yourself to learn something new.

If you are given 2,4,6,8,? and you have to find missing number you will quickly say 10. 

You know that because you know number in series is multiple of 2 with the position in the series. 

This can be represented as f(x) = x * 2 or y = x * 2. 

Not just you can answer above easily but can write function in any given language(Python/Java/C#) to identify above pattern and predict missing value.

Above is simple pattern and complex ones will involve you solving lot of difficult mathematical equation, worried? well don't be someone has already done this for you and is readily available in terms of packages.

Some of packages in python would be SciPy,SciKit,NumPy,SeaBorn,Pandas.

Why Machine Learning

In world without machine learning if you had to train your program to identify friend in image below it would do so based on attributes like eyes/ear/number of limbs and etc.

There is high probability of your program getting this wrong as there would be other animal with similar attributes and one may be mistaken for another.

In Machine Learning world you give lots of pictures of various animals in various positions and tell your program which one is which for it to make better decision.

Machine Learning is capable of doing a lot of task for you some of them are as below:-

Regression/Estimation 

The Regression/Estimation technique is used for predicting a continuous value.

e.g. Predicting price of house.

Classification

A Classification technique is used for Predicting the class or category of a case, 

e.g. if a cell is benign or malignant, or whether or not a customer will churn.

Association

Association technique is used for finding items or events that often co-occur.

e.g. Grocery items that are usually bought together by a particular customer.

Anomaly detection

Anomaly detection is used to discover abnormal and unusual cases

e.g. it is used for credit card fraud detection.

Sequence mining

Sequence mining is used for predicting the next event, for instance, the click-stream in websites.

Dimension reduction

Dimension reduction is used to reduce the size of data.

Recommendation systems

this associates people's preferences with others who have similar tastes, and recommends new items to them, such as books or movies.

If you don't understand any of it, I will be posting sample implementation in due course using python and you can follow along.