Updated March 17, 2023
Overviews Of Machine Learning
The following article provides an outline for Introduction To Machine Learning. Machine learning (ML) is the art of developing algorithms without explicit programming. In the past two decades, exabytes of data have been generated, and most industries have been fully digitized. This existing data is used by Machine learning (ML) algorithms to develop predictive models and automate several time-consuming tasks.
Given below shows how ML algorithms differ from programmed Logic-based algorithms:
For a logic-based algorithm, flow is well-defined and known in advance; however, there are several real-life scenarios (such as image classification) where logic can’t be defined. In such cases, Machine learning has proven to be extremely useful. Machine learning techniques take input parameters & expected reference output data and generate logic which is then deployed into production.
Main Components of Introduction to Machine Learning:
ML is subdivided into the following categories:
1. Supervised ML
A supervised ML algorithm takes input data (features), and outputs labeled data at the input. They are mostly used for classification and regression tasks.
Classification:
- Loan Eligibility Decision: Automate the loan approval process using data with parameters such as age, income, education, city, etc., to decide if the applicant’s loan can be approved.
Regression:
- House Price Prediction: Predict house price using features like House size, age of the house, number of rooms, locality, etc.
2. Unsupervised ML
Unsupervised ML techniques do not require any labeled data and are used for clustering data into different segments based on input features.
Example: To segregate a group of 100 people into 5 clusters, input features can include interests, hobbies, social connections, etc.
Applications of ML
In the past decade, the introduction of machine learning has transformed several industries, including healthcare, social media, digital marketing, real estate, logistics, supply chain & manufacturing. Early movers in these industries have already reaped significant profits. As a result, there is a growing demand for a skilled workforce with machine learning and domain knowledge.
Following are a few applications where ML techniques have played a significant role:
1. Spam Mail Classification
To classify mail as spam/not spam using labeled responses with data such as message content, the vocabulary used in promotional emails, sender email address, sender IP, use of hyperlinks, number punctuations, etc.
2. Cancer Detection
ML is increasingly used in healthcare for diagnosis and even cancer detection using medical data for previous patients. For example, for breast cancer detection, the training algorithm takes inputs such as tumor size, radius, curvature, and perimeter. At the output, we get the likelihood of whether the tumor is malignant or not.
3. Sales Prediction
An increasing number of vendors are digitizing their records; many have started using machine learning tools to predict sales of a particular item in a given week to stock sufficient inventory. Introduction To machine learning techniques would take inputs from the previous year’s sales for different items, find seasonal variations patterns, and give specific predictions for the sale of certain items. We can also identify low-performing items in terms of sales.
4. Face Recognition
You have probably observed while uploading pictures on Facebook that it tags your friend’s faces to their names. In the backend, machine/deep learning algorithms are doing this job. The same fundamental introduction to machine learning principles is also used for face recognition, where input face images are fed, and neural networks are trained to classify these images.
5. Text Classification
With the increasing population coming online, it has become mandatory for website/social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Quora to deploy text classification-based systems. Twitter/Quora uses this to identify hate comments/posts. Some news companies also use text classification algorithms to group similar news articles.
6. Audio/Voice Interpretation
Ever wonder how devices like Alexa, Siri, and Google are becoming intelligent daily in understanding audio data in different languages with different accents? A huge amount of data is trained in these devices to introduce machine learning techniques, which makes it possible.
7. Fraud Detection Systems
Several e-commerce companies deploy ML-based fraud detection systems to identify customers creating fake orders and eliminate vendors selling counterfeit products on the platform. Banking industries and other financial technology startups hugely rely on ML techniques to detect fraudulent transactions.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Machine Learning
Given below are the advantages and disadvantages mentioned:
Advantages
- Automate time-consuming tasks: ML-based applications have automated several tasks like low-level decision-making, data entry, tele-calling, and loan approval processes.
- Cost saving: Once the algorithm is developed and put into production, it can cause significant cost savings as human labor and decision-making are minimal.
- Turnaround time: For a lot of applications, total time is of paramount importance. ML has reduced time in domains such as auto insurance claims, where users upload pictures, and the insurance amount gets calculated. It has also helped e-commerce companies in handling returns of inventory sold.
- Data-driven decision making: Not only corporates but many governments rely on ML to decide which projects to invest in and how to utilize existing resources optimally.
Disadvantages
- ML algorithms can be biased: Often, input data to the ML algorithm is biased to a specific gender, Race, Country, Caste, etc. This results in ML algorithms propagating unwanted bias into the decision-making process. This has been observed in some applications which deployed ML-like school/college admission processes and social media recommendations.
- Require large data to achieve acceptable accuracy: While people can learn easily for small datasets, for some applications, introduction to machine learning requires huge amounts of data to achieve sufficient accuracy.
- Currently, introduction to the machine learning algorithm may be well suited for the future: ML techniques trained on the current dataset may not be well suited for the future as input distribution may change significantly over time. One of the countermeasures to overcome this is to re-train the model periodically.
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This has been a guide to Introduction To Machine Learning. Here we have discussed the introduction, main components, applications, advantages & disadvantages. You may also look at the following articles to learn more –
