Fundamentals of Machine

Learning: A
Comprehensive
Introduction
Machine learning has transformed the way we approach problems
and make decisions in various fields, from finance and healthcare to
entertainment and marketing. In this article, we will delve into the
fundamentals of machine learning, exploring its applications and
the core concepts that underpin its functionality. Whether you’re
new to the field or seeking to deepen your understanding, this guide
will provide you with a solid foundation in machine learning.

Relationship between Artificial Intelligence,

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and
Artificial Neural Networks:
Relationship between artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and artificial
neural networks

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning

(DL), and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are interconnected
concepts within the field of computer science and data analysis.
Here’s how they relate to each other:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is a broad field focused on

creating intelligent agents that can simulate human-like
reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. It
encompasses a wide range of techniques, including ML and DL,
as well as rule-based systems, expert systems, and natural
language processing. AI aims to build machines capable of
general or specialized intelligence.

2. Machine Learning (ML): ML is a subset of AI that focuses on

developing algorithms and models that enable computers to
improve their performance on a task by learning from data. ML
encompasses various methods, including supervised,
unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, and it involves the
optimization of model parameters to make accurate predictions
or decisions based on input data.

3. Deep Learning (DL): DL is a specialized subfield of ML that

deals with artificial neural networks containing multiple layers
(deep architectures). DL excels at automatically learning
hierarchical features and representations from raw data. It has
achieved remarkable success in areas like computer vision,
natural language processing, and speech recognition.

4. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs): ANNs are

computational models inspired by the human brain’s neural
structure. They consist of interconnected nodes (neurons)
organized into layers. Each connection between nodes has a
weight, and these weights are adjusted during training to learn
 patterns and relationships in data. ANNs form the foundation of
deep learning and can model complex functions and features.

AI is the broader goal of enabling machines to exhibit human-like

intelligence, while ML is a subset of AI that focuses on data-driven
learning and optimization. DL is a specialized technique within ML
that utilizes deep architectures of artificial neural networks to
automatically learn complex patterns, and ANNs are the building
blocks of DL. These concepts are interconnected and collectively
contribute to the advancement of intelligent systems and data
analysis.

What is Machine Learning?

At its core, machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI)
that empowers computers to learn and make decisions from data
without being explicitly programmed. In other words, machine
learning algorithms enable computers to identify patterns, recognize
trends, and make predictions by learning from examples and past
experiences. This ability to learn from data and adapt over time is
what sets machine learning apart and makes it a powerful tool for
solving complex problems.
Applications of Machine Learning
Machine learning finds applications across a wide range of domains,
including:

1. Finance: Predicting stock prices, credit risk assessment, fraud

detection.

2. Healthcare: Disease diagnosis, medical image analysis, drug

discovery.

3. Marketing: Customer segmentation, recommendation systems,

personalized advertising.

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP): Sentiment analysis,

language translation, chatbots.
5. Computer Vision: Object detection, facial recognition,
autonomous vehicles.

6. Gaming: Character behavior modeling, opponent AI,

procedural content generation.

7. Manufacturing: Quality control, predictive maintenance,

supply chain optimization.

These are just a few examples, showcasing the diverse and impactful
applications of machine learning in today’s world.

Types of Machine Learning

Machine learning can be broadly categorized into three main types:

1. Supervised Learning: In supervised learning, the algorithm

learns from labeled examples in the form of input-output pairs.
 It aims to map inputs to correct outputs by identifying patterns
in the data. Common algorithms include linear regression (for
regression tasks) and classification algorithms like decision trees,
support vector machines, and neural networks.

2. Unsupervised Learning: Unsupervised learning involves

learning patterns and structures from unlabeled data. Clustering
and dimensionality reduction are typical tasks in unsupervised
learning. K-means clustering and principal component analysis
(PCA) are popular unsupervised algorithms.

3. Reinforcement Learning: Reinforcement learning is inspired

by behavioral psychology, where an agent learns how to interact
with an environment to maximize rewards. It involves taking
actions in an environment to achieve a specific goal.
Reinforcement learning is widely used in robotics, game playing,
and autonomous systems.

4. Semi-Supervised Learning: Semi-supervised learning is a

machine learning paradigm that leverages a small labeled dataset
and a larger unlabeled dataset to improve model performance by
combining supervised and unsupervised techniques. It’s used in
scenarios where obtaining fully labeled data is costly or time-
consuming, such as in medical image analysis and natural
language processing tasks.

Core Concepts and Terminology

Features and Labels

In machine learning, data is typically represented as features and

labels. Features are the input variables that the algorithm uses to
make predictions or decisions. For example, in a medical diagnosis
model, features might include patient age, blood pressure, and
cholesterol levels. Labels, on the other hand, are the desired outputs
or outcomes that the algorithm is trying to predict. In the medical
diagnosis example, the label could indicate whether a patient has a
specific disease or not.

Training and Testing

The process of developing a machine learning model involves

training it on a dataset and evaluating its performance. The dataset
is divided into two parts: the training set and the testing set. The
training set is used to teach the model and adjust its parameters so
that it can learn from the data. The testing set, which the model has
never seen before, is used to assess its performance and
generalization ability. The goal is to build a model that can make
accurate predictions on new, unseen data.

Source: Underfitting, Optimal-fitting and Overfitting for linear regression

Overfitting and Underfitting

Two common challenges in machine learning are overfitting and
underfitting.

1. Overfitting occurs when a model learns the training data too

well and captures noise, leading to poor performance on new
data.

2. Underfitting, on the other hand, occurs when a model is too

simple to capture the underlying patterns in the data, resulting in
poor performance on both training and testing data.

3. Optimal fitting in machine learning refers to finding the right

balance between model complexity and data representation,
where the model captures underlying patterns without
overfitting (capturing noise) or underfitting (oversimplifying),
resulting in better generalization to new, unseen data.

Balancing between these two extremes is essential for building a

model that can generalize well to new data.

Examples of Supervised Learning

In supervised learning, our goal is to learn the mapping function (f),

which refers to being able to understand how the input (X) should
be matched with output (Y) using available data.

Here, the machine learning model learns to fit mapping between

examples of input features with their associated labels. When
models are trained with these examples, we can use them to make
new predictions on unseen data.
The predicted labels can be both numbers or categories. For
instance, if we are predicting house prices, then the output is a
number. In this case, the model is a regression model. If we are
predicting if an email is spam or not, the output is a category and the
model is a classification model.

Example: House prices

One practical example of supervised learning problems is predicting

house prices. How is this achieved?

First, we need data about the houses: square footage, number of

rooms, features, whether a house has a garden or not, and so on. We
then need to know the prices of these houses, i.e. the corresponding
labels. By leveraging data coming from thousands of houses, their
features and prices, we can now train a supervised machine learning
model to predict a new house’s price based on the examples
observed by the model.

Example: Is it a cat or a dog?

Image classification is a popular problem in the computer vision

field. Here, the goal is to predict what class an image belongs to. In
this set of problems, we are interested in finding the class label of an
image. More precisely: is the image of a car or a plane? A cat or a
dog?

Example: How’s the weather today?

One particularly interesting problem which requires considering a

lot of different parameters is predicting weather conditions in a
particular location. To make correct predictions for the weather, we
need to take into account various parameters, including historical
temperature data, precipitation, wind, humidity, and so on.

This particularly interesting and challenging problem may require

developing complex supervised models that include multiple tasks.
Predicting today’s temperature is a regression problem, where the
output labels are continuous variables. By contrast, predicting
whether it is going to snow or not tomorrow is a binary classification
problem.

Example: Who are the unhappy customers?

Another great example of supervised learning is text classification

problems. In this set of problems, the goal is to predict the class
label of a given piece of text.

One particularly popular topic in text classification is to predict the

sentiment of a piece of text, like a tweet or a product review. This is
widely used in the e-commerce industry to help companies to
determine negative comments made by customers.

Examples of Unsupervised Learning

There are a few different types of unsupervised learning. We’ll

review three common approaches below.
Example: Finding customer segments

Clustering is an unsupervised technique where the goal is to find

natural groups or clusters in a feature space and interpret the input
data. There are many different clustering algorithms in the field
of data science. One common approach is to divide the data points in
a way that each data point falls into a group that is similar to other
data points in the same group based on a predefined similarity or
distance metric in the feature space.

Clustering is commonly used for determining customer segments in

marketing data. Being able to determine different segments of
customers helps marketing teams approach these customer
segments in unique ways. (Think of features like gender, location,
age, education, income bracket, and so on.)

Example: Reducing the complexity of a problem

Dimensionality reduction is a commonly used unsupervised learning

technique where the goal is to reduce the number of random
variables under consideration. It has several practical applications.
One of the most common uses of dimensionality reduction is to
reduce the complexity of a problem by projecting the feature space
to a lower-dimensional space so that less correlated variables are
considered in a machine learning system.

The most common approaches used in dimensionality reduction are

PCA, t-SNE, and UMAP algorithms. They are especially useful for
reducing the complexity of a problem and also visualizing the data
instances in a better way. Before going into more detail about
feature projection, let’s look at another important concept in
machine learning: feature selection.
Example: Feature selection

Even though feature selection and dimensionality reduction aim

toward reducing the number of features in the original set of
features, understanding how feature selection works helps us get a
better understanding of dimensionality reduction.

Assume that we want to predict how capable an applicant is of

repaying a loan from the perspective of a bank. Here, we need to
help the bank set up a machine learning system so that each loan
can be given to applicants who can repay the loan. We need a lot of
information about each application to make predictions. A few
important attributes about applicants are the applicant’s average
monthly income, debt, credit history, and so on.

Typically, however, banks collect much more information from

applicants when taking their applications. Not all of it is relevant for
predicting an applicant’s credit risk score. For instance, does an
applicant’s age make any difference when deciding whether the
applicant can repay the loan? Is the applicant’s gender important for
determining the credit risk score? Probably not.

It is important to understand that not every feature adds value to

solving the problem. Therefore, eliminating these features is an
essential part of machine learning. In feature selection, we try to
eliminate a subset of the original set of features.

In dimensionality reduction, we still discard features but do that in a

way that the feature space is projected onto a smaller feature space,
therefore eliminating less important information during this
process.
Customer Segmentation (K-Means) | Analysis | Kaggle