Chapter 3

      Machine Learning Means … Using a Machine to Learn from Data

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      If you’ve been watching any news for the past decade, you’ve no doubt heard of a concept called machine learning — often referenced when reporters are covering stories on the newest amazing invention from artificial intelligence. In this chapter, you dip your toes into the area called machine learning, and in Part 3 you see how machine learning and data science are used to increase business profits.

Defining Machine Learning and Its Processes

      Machine learning is the practice of applying algorithmic models to data over and over again so that your computer discovers hidden patterns or trends that you can use to make predictions. It’s also called algorithmic learning. Machine learning has a vast and ever-expanding assortment of use cases, including

      Walking through the steps of the machine learning process

      Three main steps are involved in machine learning: setup, learning, and application. Setup involves acquiring data, preprocessing it, selecting the most appropriate variables for the task at hand (called feature selection), and breaking the data into training and test datasets. You use the training data to train the model, and the test data to test the accuracy of the model’s predictions. The learning step involves model experimentation, training, building, and testing. The application step involves model deployment and prediction.

      FIGURE 3-1: A example of a simple random sample

      Becoming familiar with machine learning terms

      Before diving too deeply into a discussion of machine learning methods, you need to know about the (sometimes confusing) vocabulary associated with the field. Because machine learning is an offshoot of both traditional statistics and computer science, it has adopted terms from both fields and added a few of its own. Here is what you need to know:

       Instance: The same as a row (in a data table), an observation (in statistics), and a data point. Machine learning practitioners are also known to call an instance a case.

       Feature: The same as a column or field (in a data table) and a variable (in statistics). In regression methods, a feature is also called an independent variable (IV).

       Target variable: The same as a predictant or dependent variable (DV) in statistics.

In machine learning, feature selection is a somewhat straightforward process for selecting appropriate variables; for feature engineering, you need substantial domain expertise and strong data science skills to manually design input variables from the underlying dataset. You use feature engineering in cases where your model needs a better representation of the problem being solved than is available in the raw dataset.

      

Although machine learning is often referred to in context of data science and artificial intelligence, these terms are all separate and distinct. Machine learning is a practice within data science, but there is more to data science than just machine learning — as you will learn throughout this book. Artificial intelligence often, but not always, involves data science and machine learning. Artificial intelligence is a term that describes autonomously acting agents. In some case AI agents are robots, in others they are software applications. If the agent’s actions are triggered by outputs from an

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