Introduction to

Machine Learning

These slides were assembled firstly by Eric Eaton of the university of Pensylvania and many other authors,
then recompiled by Olle Olle for the purpose of an introductory course of Machine Learning at UIECC. We
thank the first authors and acknowledge their credit.
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Robot Image Credit: Viktoriya Sukhanova © 123RF.com
 What is Machine Learning?
“Learning is any process by which a system improves
performance from experience.”
- Herbert Simon

Definition by Tom Mitchell (1998):

Machine Learning is the study of algorithms that
• improve their performance P
• at some task T
• with experience E.
A well-defined learning task is given by <P, T, E>.
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 Traditional Programming

Data
Computer Output
Program

Machine Learning

Data
Computer Program
Output

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Slide credit: Pedro Domingos
 When Do We Use Machine Learning?
ML is used when:
• Human expertise does not exist (navigating on Mars)
• Humans can’t explain their expertise (speech recognition)
• Models must be customized (personalized medicine)
• Models are based on huge amounts of data (genomics)

Learning isn’t always useful:

• There is no need to “learn” to calculate payroll
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Based on slide by E. Alpaydin
 A classic example of a task that requires machine learning:
It is very hard to say what makes a 2

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Slide credit: Geoffrey Hinton
 Some more examples of tasks that are best
solved by using a learning algorithm
• Recognizing patterns:
– Facial identities or facial expressions
– Handwritten or spoken words
– Medical images
• Generating patterns:
– Generating images or motion sequences
• Recognizing anomalies:
– Unusual credit card transactions
– Unusual patterns of sensor readings in a nuclear power plant
• Prediction:
– Future stock prices or currency exchange rates
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Slide credit: Geoffrey Hinton
 Sample Applications
• Web search
• Computational biology
• Finance
• E-commerce
• Space exploration
• Robotics
• Information extraction
• Social networks
• Debugging software
• [Your favorite area]

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Slide credit: Pedro Domingos
 Samuel’s Checkers-Player
“Machine Learning: Field of study that gives
computers the ability to learn without being
explicitly programmed.” -Arthur Samuel (1959)

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 Defining the Learning Task
Improve on task T, with respect to
performance metric P, based on experience E
T: Playing checkers
P: Percentage of games won against an arbitrary opponent
E: Playing practice games against itself

T: Recognizing hand-written words

P: Percentage of words correctly classified
E: Database of human-labeled images of handwritten words

T: Driving on four-lane highways using vision sensors

P: Average distance traveled before a human-judged error
E: A sequence of images and steering commands recorded while
observing a human driver.

T: Categorize email messages as spam or legitimate.

P: Percentage of email messages correctly classified.
E: Database of emails, some with human-given labels
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Slide credit: Ray Mooney
State of the Art Applications of
Machine Learning

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 Autonomous Cars

• Nevada made it legal for

autonomous cars to drive on
roads in June 2011
• As of 2013, four states (Nevada,
Florida, California, and
Michigan) have legalized
autonomous cars
Penn’s Autonomous Car 
(Ben Franklin Racing Team) 12
Autonomous Car Sensors

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 Autonomous Car Technology
Path
Planning

Laser Terrain Mapping

Learning from Human Drivers

Adaptive Vision

Sebastian

Stanley

Images and movies taken from Sebastian Thrun’s multimedia w1e4bsite.

Deep Learning in the Headlines

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 Deep Belief Net on Face Images
object models

object parts
(combination
of edges)

edges

pixels
Based on materials 16
by Andrew Ng
 Learning of Object Parts

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Slide credit: Andrew Ng
 Training on Multiple Objects

Trained on 4 classes (cars, faces,

motorbikes, airplanes).
Second layer: Shared-features
and object-specific features.
Third layer: More specific
features.

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Slide credit: Andrew Ng
 Scene Labeling via Deep Learning

[Farabet et al. ICML 2012, PAMI 2013] 19

 Inference from Deep Learned Models
Generating posterior samples from faces by “filling in” experiments
(cf. Lee and Mumford, 2003). Combine bottom-up and top-down inference.

Input images

Samples from
feedforward
Inference
(control)

Samples from
Full posterior
inference

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Slide credit: Andrew Ng
 Machine Learning in
Automatic Speech Recognition
A Typical Speech Recognition System

ML used to predict of phone states from the sound spectrogram

Deep learning has state-of-the-art results

# Hidden Layers 1 2 4 8 10 12

Word Error Rate % 16.0 12.8 11.4 10.9 11.0 11.1

Baseline GMM performance = 15.4%

[Zeiler et al. “On rectified linear units for speech
recognition” ICASSP 2013]
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 Impact of Deep Learning in Speech Technology

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Slide credit: Li Deng, MS Research
Types of Learning

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 Types of Learning

• Supervised (inductive) learning

– Given: training data + desired outputs (labels)
• Unsupervised learning
– Given: training data (without desired outputs)
• Semi-supervised learning
– Given: training data + a few desired outputs
• Reinforcement learning
– Rewards from sequence of actions

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Based on slide by Pedro Domingos
 Supervised Learning: Regression
• Given (x1, y1), (x2, y2), ..., (xn, yn)
• Learn a function f (x) to predict y given x
– y is real-valued == regression
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8
September Arctic Sea Ice Extent

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(1,000,000 sq km)

6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Year
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Data from G. Witt. Journal of Statistics Education, Volume 21, Number 1 (2013)
 Supervised Learning: Classification
• Given (x1, y1), (x2, y2), ..., (xn, yn)
• Learn a function f (x) to predict y given x
– y is categorical == classification
Breast Cancer (Malignant / Benign)

1(Malignant)

0(Benign)
Tumor Size

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Based on example by Andrew Ng
 Supervised Learning: Classification
• Given (x1, y1), (x2, y2), ..., (xn, yn)
• Learn a function f (x) to predict y given x
– y is categorical == classification
Breast Cancer (Malignant / Benign)

1(Malignant)

0(Benign)
Tumor Size

Based on example by Andrew Ng

Tumor Size 28
 Supervised Learning: Classification
• Given (x1, y1), (x2, y2), ..., (xn, yn)
• Learn a function f (x) to predict y given x
– y is categorical == classification
Breast Cancer (Malignant / Benign)

1(Malignant)

0(Benign)
Tumor Size
Predict Benign Predict Malignant

Based on example by Andrew Ng

Tumor Size 29
 Supervised Learning
• x can be multi-dimensional
– Each dimension corresponds to an attribute

- Clump Thickness
- Uniformity of Cell Size
Age - Uniformity of Cell Shape
…

Tumor Size

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Based on example by Andrew Ng
 Unsupervised Learning
• Given x1, x2, ..., x n (without labels)
• Output hidden structure behind the x’s
– E.g., clustering

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 Unsupervised Learning
Genomics application: group individuals by genetic similarity
Genes

Individuals 32
[Source: Daphne Koller]
 Unsupervised Learning

Organize computing clusters Social network analysis

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/E. Churchwell (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison)

Market segmentation Astronomical data analysis 33

Slide credit: Andrew Ng
 Reinforcement Learning
• Given a sequence of states and actions with
(delayed) rewards, output a policy
– Policy is a mapping from states  actions that
tells you what to do in a given state
• Examples:
– Credit assignment problem
– Game playing
– Robot in a maze
– Balance a pole on your hand

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 The Agent-Environment Interface

Agent and environment interact at discrete time steps : t  0, 1, 2, K

Agent observes state at step t : st S
produces action at step t : at  A(st )
gets resulting reward : rt 1 
and resulting next state : st 1

... rt +1 s rt +2 s rt +3 s ...
st a t +1
at +1 t +2
at +2 t +3 at +3
t
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Slide credit: Sutton & Barto
 Reinforcement Learning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cgWya-wjgY 38
 Inverse Reinforcement Learning
• Learn policy from user demonstrations

Stanford Autonomous Helicopter

http://heli.stanford.edu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCdxqn0fcnE
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Framing a Learning Problem

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 Designing a Learning System
• Choose the training experience
• Choose exactly what is to be learned
– i.e. the target function
• Choose how to represent the target function
• Choose a learning algorithm to infer the target
function from the experience

Training data Learner

Environment/
Experience Knowledge

Testing data
Performance
Element 41
Based on slide by Ray Mooney
 Training vs. Test Distribution
• We generally assume that the training and
test examples are independently drawn from
the same overall distribution of data
– We call this “i.i.d” which stands for “independent
and identically distributed”

• If examples are not independent, requires

collective classification
• If test distribution is different, requires
transfer learning
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Slide credit: Ray Mooney
 ML in a Nutshell
• Tens of thousands of machine learning
algorithms
– Hundreds new every year

• Every ML algorithm has three components:

– Representation
– Optimization
– Evaluation

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Slide credit: Pedro Domingos
 Various Function Representations
• Numerical functions
– Linear regression
– Neural networks
– Support vector machines
• Symbolic functions
– Decision trees
– Rules in propositional logic
– Rules in first-order predicate logic
• Instance-based functions
– Nearest-neighbor
– Case-based
• Probabilistic Graphical Models
– Naïve Bayes
– Bayesian networks
– Hidden-Markov Models (HMMs)
– Probabilistic Context Free Grammars (PCFGs)
– Markov networks

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Slide credit: Ray Mooney
 Various Search/Optimization
Algorithms
• Gradient descent
– Perceptron
– Backpropagation
• Dynamic Programming
– HMM Learning
– PCFG Learning
• Divide and Conquer
– Decision tree induction
– Rule learning
• Evolutionary Computation
– Genetic Algorithms (GAs)
– Genetic Programming (GP)
– Neuro-evolution

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Slide credit: Ray Mooney
 Evaluation
• Accuracy
• Precision and recall
• Squared error
• Likelihood
• Posterior probability
• Cost / Utility
• Margin
• Entropy
• K-L divergence
• etc.

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Slide credit: Pedro Domingos
 ML in Practice

• Understand domain, prior knowledge, and goals

• Data integration, selection, cleaning, pre-processing, etc.
Loop • Learn models
• Interpret results
• Consolidate and deploy discovered knowledge

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Based on a slide by Pedro Domingos