Fundamentals of Machine Learning: A
Student Study Guide
What is Machine Learning?
Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused on building systems
that learn from data and improve over time without being explicitly programmed.
ML is used in spam detection, recommendation systems, image recognition, and more.
Types of Machine Learning
1. Supervised Learning:
- Learns from labeled data
- Example: Email spam detection
2. Unsupervised Learning:
- Finds hidden patterns in unlabeled data
- Example: Customer segmentation
3. Reinforcement Learning:
- Learns by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback
- Example: Game-playing agents like AlphaGo
Common Algorithms
- Linear Regression
- Logistic Regression
- Decision Trees
- Support Vector Machines (SVM)
- k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN)
- Neural Networks
Machine Learning Workflow
1. Define the problem
2. Collect and preprocess data
3. Choose a model
4. Train the model
5. Evaluate performance
6. Make predictions and improve model
Applications of Machine Learning
Sector | Use Case
---------------------|-------------------------------
Healthcare | Predicting patient diagnoses
Finance | Credit scoring, fraud detection
Retail | Product recommendations
Manufacturing | Quality control
Autonomous Systems | Self-driving vehicles
Conclusion
Machine Learning is an essential part of modern AI systems. Mastering ML techniques
opens the door to high-impact careers across many industries.
