Introduction to

Machine Learning
Lecture 01

Mirza Mohammad Lutfe Elahi Silvia Ahmed

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU
 Machine Learning
Machine Learning
• Grew out of work in AI
• New capability for computers
Examples:
• Database mining Large datasets from growth of
automation/web. E.g., Web click data, medical records,
biology, engineering
• Applications can’t program by hand. E.g., Autonomous
helicopter, handwriting recognition, most of Natural Language
Processing (NLP), Computer Vision.
• Self-customizing programs E.g., Amazon, Netflix product
recommendations
• Understanding human learning (brain, real AI).
CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU
 Tasks best solved by learning
• Recognizing patterns:
– Objects in real scenes
– Facial identities or facial expressions
– Spoken words
• Recognizing anomalies:
– Unusual sequences of credit card transactions
– Unusual patterns of sensor readings in a nuclear power plant
• Prediction:
– Future stock prices or currency exchange rates
– Which movies will a person like?

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 What is Machine Learning?
• Two definitions of Machine Learning are offered.

• Arthur Samuel (1959) described it as: "the field of study that

gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly
programmed."
• This is an older, informal definition.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 What is Machine Learning?
• Tom Mitchell (1998) provides a more modern definition: “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.”
• Example:
Playing checkers.
E = the experience of playing many games of checkers
T = the task of playing checkers.
P = the probability that the program will win the next game.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 What is Machine Learning?
• Suppose your email program watches which emails you do or
do not mark as spam, and based on that learns how to better
filter spam. What is the task T in this setting?

– Classifying emails as spam or not spam.

– Watching you label emails as spam or not spam.
– The number (or fraction) of emails correctly classified as spam/not
spam.
– None of the above—this is not a machine learning problem.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Machine Learning Classification
• In general, any machine learning problem can be assigned to
one of two broad classifications:
– Supervised learning,
– Unsupervised learning.

• Others: Reinforcement learning, recommender

systems.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning
• Probably the most common problem type in machine learning
• Data set is given
• Already know what the correct output should look like, having
the idea that there is a relationship between the input and the
output.
• Categories
– Regression – trying to predict results within a continuous output
– Classification - trying to predict results in a discrete output

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
Example 1:
• Given data about the size of houses on the real estate market,
try to predict their price. Price as a function of size is a
continuous output, so this is a regression problem.

• We could turn this example into a classification problem by

instead making our output about whether the house "sells for
more or less than the asking price." Here we are classifying the
houses based on price into two discrete categories.
CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU
 Supervised Learning Example
What approaches can we use to solve this?
• Straight line through data
– Maybe $150 000
• Second order polynomial
– Maybe $200 000
• One thing we discuss later - how to chose straight or curved
line?
• We know actual prices for houses
– The idea is we can learn what makes the price a certain value from
the training data
– The algorithm should then produce more right answers based on new
training data where we don't know the price already
• i.e. predict the price

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
Example 2:
• Can we define breast cancer as malignant or benign based on
tumor size?

• Can you estimate prognosis based on tumor size?

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
Example 2:
• This is an example of a classification problem
– Classify data into one of two discrete classes - no in between, either
malignant or not
– In classification problems, can have a discrete number of possible
values for the output
• e.g. maybe have four values
– 0 - benign
– 1 - type 1
– 2 - type 2
– 3 - type 4

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
Example 2:
• In classification problems we can plot data in a different way
• Using only one attribute (size)

• In other problems may have multiple attributes

• We may also, for example, know age and tumor size

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
Example 3:
• (a) Regression - Given a picture of male/female, we have to
predict his/her age on the basis of given picture.
• (b) Classification - Given a picture of male/female, we have to
predict whether he/she is of high school, college, graduate age.
• Another example for classification - Banks have to decide
whether or not to give a loan to someone on the basis of his
credit history.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Supervised Learning Example
You’re running a company, and you want to develop learning
algorithms to address each of two problems.

Problem 1: You have a large inventory of identical items. You

want to predict how many of these items will sell over the next 3
months.

Problem 2: You’d like software to examine individual customer

accounts, and for each account decide if it has been
hacked/compromised.

Should you treat these as classification or as regression problems?

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Unsupervised Learning
• Here is a data set, can you structure it?
• Can derive structure from data where it doesn't necessarily
know the effect of the variables.
• Can derive this structure by clustering the data based on
relationships among the variables in the data.
• There is no feedback based on the prediction results.

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Unsupervised Learning Example
Example 1:
• Have a group of individuals
• On each measure expression of a gene
• Run algorithm to cluster individuals into types of people

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU

 Unsupervised Learning Example
Example 1:
• Cocktail party problem - lots of overlapping voices - hard to
hear what everyone is saying
– Two people talking
– Microphones at different distances from speakers

CSE 445 Machine Learning ECE@NSU