Introduction To Machine Learning For Beginners
Introduction To Machine Learning For Beginners
According to Arthur Samuel, Machine Learning algorithms enable the computers to learn
from data, and even improve themselves, without being explicitly programmed.
In order to enable the software to independently generate solutions, the prior action of people
is necessary. For example, the required algorithms and data must be fed into the systems in
advance and the respective analysis rules for the recognition of patterns in the data stock must
be defined. Once these two steps have been completed, the system can perform the following
tasks by Machine Learning:
It was in the 1940s when the first manually operated computer system, ENIAC (Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer), was invented. At that time the word “computer” was
being used as a name for a human with intensive numerical computation capabilities, so,
ENIAC was called a numerical computing machine! Well, you may say it has nothing to do
with learning?! WRONG, from the beginning the idea was to build a machine able to emulate
human thinking and learning.
In the 1950s, we see the first computer game program claiming to be able to beat the checkers
world champion. This program helped checkers players a lot in improving their skills!
Around the same time, Frank Rosenblatt invented the Perceptron which was a very, very
simple classifier but when it was combined in large numbers, in a network, it became a
powerful monster. Well, the monster is relative to the time and in that time, it was a real
breakthrough. Then we see several years of stagnation of the neural network field due to its
difficulties in solving certain problems.
Thanks to statistics, machine learning became very famous in the 1990s. The intersection of
computer science and statistics gave birth to probabilistic approaches in AI. This shifted the
field further toward data-driven approaches. Having large-scale data available, scientists
started to build intelligent systems that were able to analyze and learn from large amounts of
data. As a highlight, IBM’s Deep Blue system beat the world champion of chess, the grand-
master Garry Kasparov.
In Supervised learning, an AI system is presented with data which is labeled, which means
that each data tagged with the correct label.
The goal is to approximate the mapping function so well that when you have new input data
(x) that you can predict the output variables (Y) for that data.
Once it is trained we can test our model by testing it with some test new mails and checking
of the model is able to predict the right output.
In the above example, we have given some characters to our model which are ‘Ducks’ and
‘Not Ducks’. In our training data, we don’t provide any label to the corresponding data. The
unsupervised model is able to separate both the characters by looking at the type of data and
models the underlying structure or distribution in the data in order to learn more about it.
A reinforcement learning algorithm, or agent, learns by interacting with its environment. The
agent receives rewards by performing correctly and penalties for performing incorrectly. The
agent learns without intervention from a human by maximizing its reward and minimizing its
penalty. It is a type of dynamic programming that trains algorithms using a system of reward
and punishment.
In the above example, we can see that the agent is given 2 options i.e. a path with water or a
path with fire. A reinforcement algorithm works on reward a system i.e. if the agent uses the
fire path then the rewards are subtracted and agent tries to learn that it should avoid the fire
path. If it had chosen the water path or the safe path then some points would have been added
to the reward points, the agent then would try to learn what path is safe and what path isn’t.
It is basically leveraging the rewards obtained, the agent improves its environment
knowledge to select the next action.