What in the world is Machine Learning aka ML?

Deep Learning under Machine learningdeep

According to Arthur Samuel (1959):

Machine Learning is a field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.

It all started with his Checkers game. =)

According to Tom Mitchell:

A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.

Makes sense right?

If you had skipped that, here is the summary,

1. Computers -> Learn -> without being explicitly programmed
2. Computers -> said to learn -> if its performance increases with experience in performing tasks

So how is a Machine Learning problem approached?

This is for a beginner to understand the process in simple words*

1. A Dataset is obtained first: Yes, Data is everything. Without data there is no machine learning. You heard that right. Everything in this digital age is dependent on Data and data makes you powerful ( really powerful ). There are these breathtaking possibilities with proper data which I’ll share in the future.
2. The Dataset is made usable: umm.. Yeah I just said that data is valuable , then why should be modify and lose a part of data? Actually we do not need all of that data or we need to convert them into usable form. This will be again discussed in the future.
3. A good model / algorithm is chosen: All algorithms cannot be applied to a dataset and do not yield efficient results. So we need enough practice and experience in choosing the proper algorithm, or we let another algorithm choose the best one for us, we will discuss that in a later blog post.
4. Results and accuracy are calculated: If satisfied then move on (never happens XD) ,try optimizing it.
5. Repeat process 3 and 4.

These are just an abstract layer of what occurs, but according to the dataset and the goal of the problem, the steps change for sure.

Hope this gave you the jist you needed. Find more at https://tharunshiv.ml/

By Tharun Shiv

Originally published at tharunshiv.ml on April 22, 2018.