1.2 What is machine learning?

Three key parts

Machine learning (ML) is a modern software development technique, and a
type of artificial intelligence (AI), that enables computers to solve problems
by using examples of real-world data. It allows computers to automatically
learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed to
do so.

This field is concerned with the capability of machines to perform activities

using human-like intelligence. Within machine learning there are several
different kinds of tasks or techniques:

 In supervised learning, every training sample from the dataset has a

corresponding label or output value associated with it. As a result, the
algorithm learns to predict labels or output values. We will explore
this in-depth in this lesson.
 In unsupervised learning, there are no labels for the training data. A
machine learning algorithm tries to learn the underlying patterns or
distributions that govern the data. We will explore this in-depth in this
lesson.
 In reinforcement learning, the algorithm figures out which actions to
take in a situation to maximize a reward (in the form of a number) on
the way to reaching a specific goal. This is a completely different
approach than supervised and unsupervised learning. We will dive
deep into this in the next lesson.

How is machine learning different?

In traditional problem-solving with software, a person analyzes a problem

and engineers a solution in code to solve that problem. For many real-
world problems, this process can be laborious (or even impossible)
because a correct solution would need to take a vast number of edge
cases into consideration.

 Imagine, for example, the challenging task of writing a program that

can detect if a cat is present in an image. Solving this in the traditional
way would require careful attention to details like varying lighting
conditions, different types of cats, and various poses a cat might be in.
 In machine learning, the problem solver abstracts away part of their
solution as a flexible component called a model, and uses a special
program called a model training algorithm to adjust that model to
real-world data. The result is a trained model which can be used to
predict outcomes that are not part of the dataset used to train it.
 In a way, machine learning automates some of the statistical
reasoning and pattern-matching the problem solver would
traditionally do.
 The overall goal is to use a model created by a model-training
algorithm to generate predictions or find patterns in data that can be
used to solve a problem.
Understanding the terminology

Machine learning is a new field created at the intersection of statistics,

applied math, and computer science. Because of the rapid and recent
growth of machine learning, each of these fields might use slightly different
formal definitions of the same terms.

Terminology

Machine learning, or ML, is a modern software development technique that

enables computers to solve problems by using examples of real-world data.

In supervised learning, every training sample from the dataset has a

corresponding label or output value associated with it. As a result, the
algorithm learns to predict labels or output values.
In reinforcement learning, the algorithm figures out which actions to take in
a situation to maximize a reward (in the form of a number) on the way to
reaching a specific goal.

In unsupervised learning, there are no labels for the training data. A

machine learning algorithm tries to learn the underlying patterns or
distributions that govern the data.

Nearly all tasks solved with machine learning involve three primary
components:

 A machine learning model

 A model training algorithm
 A model inference algorithm

Reviewing the clay analogy of machine learning

You can understand the relationships between these components by
imagining the stages of crafting a teapot from a lump of clay.
 1. First, you start with a block of raw clay. At this stage, the clay can be
molded into many different forms and be used to serve many different
purposes. You decide to use this lump of clay to make a teapot.
2. So how do you create this teapot? You inspect and analyze the raw
clay and decide how to change it to make it look more like the teapot
you have in mind.
3. Next, you mold the clay to make it look more like the teapot that is
your goal.

Congratulations! You've completed your teapot. You've inspected the

materials, evaluated how to change them to reach your goal, and made the
changes. The teapot is now ready for your enjoyment.

What are machine learning models?

A machine learning model, like a piece of clay, can be molded into many
different forms and serve many different purposes. A more technical
definition would be that a machine learning model is a block of code or
framework that can be modified to solve different but related problems
based on the data provided.

Important

A model is an extremely generic program (or block of code), made specific by

the data used to train it. It is used to solve different problems.

Two simple examples

Example 1
Imagine you own a snow cone cart, and you have some data about the
average number of snow cones sold per day based on the high temperature.
You want to better understand this relationship to make sure you have
enough inventory on hand for those high sales days.
In the graph above, you can see one example of a model, a linear regression
model (indicated by the solid line). You can see that, based on the data
provided, the model predicts that as the high temperature for the day
increases so do the average number of snow cones sold. Sweet!

Example 2
Let's look at a different example that uses the same linear regression model,
but with different data and a completely different question to answer.
Imagine that you work in higher education and you want to better
understand the relationship between the cost of enrollment and the
number of students attending college. In this example, our model predicts
that as the cost of tuition increases, the number of people attending college
is likely to decrease.

Using the same linear regression model (indicated by the solid line), you can
see that the number of people attending college does go down as the cost
increases.
Both examples showcase that a model is a generic program made specific by
the data used to train it.

How are model training algorithms used to train a

model?
In the preceding section, we talked about two key pieces of information: a
model and data. In this section, we show you how those two pieces of
information are used to create a trained model. This process is called model
training.

Model training algorithms work through an interactive process

Let's revisit our clay teapot analogy. We've gotten our piece of clay, and now
we want to make a teapot. Let's look at the algorithm for molding clay and
how it resembles a machine learning algorithm:

 Think about the changes that need to be made. The first thing you
would do is inspect the raw clay and think about what changes can be
made to make it look more like a teapot. Similarly, a model training
algorithm uses the model to process data and then compares the
results against some end goal, such as our clay teapot.
 Make those changes. Now, you mold the clay to make it look more
like a teapot. Similarly, a model training algorithm gently nudges
specific parts of the model in a direction that brings the model closer
to achieving the goal.
 Repeat. By iterating these steps over and over, you get closer and
closer to what you want, until you determine that you’re close enough
and then you can stop.
After finishing this lesson, you will have been introduced to the key terms
and the most common techniques used to solve problems in machine
learning.

 A model is an extremely generic program, made specific by the data

used to train it.
 Model training algorithms work through an interactive process where
the current model iteration is analyzed to determine what changes
can be made to get closer to the goal. Those changes are made and
the iteration continues until the model is evaluated to meet the goals.
 Model inference is when the trained model is used to generate
predictions.
2.1 Introduction to the five machine learning
steps

Major steps in the machine learning process

In the preceding diagram, you can see an outline of the major steps of the
machine learning process. Regardless of the specific model or training
algorithm used, machine learning practitioners practice a common workflow
to accomplish machine learning tasks.
These steps are iterative. In practice, that means that at each step along the
process, you review how the process is going. Are things operating as you
expected? If not, go back and revisit your current step or previous steps to
try and identify the breakdown.
The rest of the course is designed around these very important steps.

Congratulations for completing this learning module. In this module, you

learned about labeled data versus unlabeled data, and how that plays a role
in defining the machine learning task you are going to use. Furthermore, you
started to explore which machine learning tasks are used to solve certain
kinds of machine learning problems.
Here’s a quick recap of the terms introduced in this lesson:

 Clustering is an unsupervised learning task that helps to determine if

there are any naturally occurring groupings in the data.
 A categorical label has a discrete set of possible values, such as "is a
cat" and "is not a cat."
 A continuous (regression) label does not have a discrete set of
possible values, which means there are potentially an unlimited
number of possibilities.
 Discrete is a term taken from statistics referring to an outcome that
takes only a finite number of values (such as days of the week).
 A label refers to data that already contains the solution.
  Using unlabeled data means you don't need to provide the model
with any kind of label or solution while the model is being trained.

2.2 Define the problem

How do you start a machine learning task?

To get started, it is important to follow these two important steps

Step 1: Define a very specific task

Think back to the snow cone sales example. Now imagine that you own a
frozen treats store and you sell snow cones along with many other products.
You wonder, "How do I increase sales?" It's a valid question, but it's
the opposite of a very specific task. The following examples demonstrate
how a machine learning practitioner might attempt to answer that question.

 Question: Does adding a $1.00 charge for sprinkles on a hot fudge

sundae increase the sales of hot fudge sundaes?
  Question: Does adding a $0.50 charge for organic flavors in your snow
cone increase the sales of snow cones?

Step 2: Identify the machine learning task we might use to solve this
problem

 This helps you better understand the data you need for a project.

What exactly is a machine learning task?

All model training algorithms, and the models themselves, take data as their
input. Their outputs can be very different and are classified into a few
different groups, based on the task they are designed to solve.
Often, we use the kind of data required to train a model as part of defining a
machine learning task.
In this lesson, we will focus on two common machine learning tasks:

 Supervised learning
 Unsupervised learning

The presence or absence of labeling in your data is often used to identify a

machine learning task.

Supervised and unsupervised learning

Supervised tasks

A task is supervised if you are using labeled data. We use the term labeled to
refer to data that already contains the solutions, called labels.
For example, predicting the number of snow cones sold based on the
average temperature outside is an example of supervised learning.

In the preceding graph, the data contains both a temperature and the
number of snow cones sold. Both components are used to generate the
linear regression shown on the graph. Our goal was to predict the number of
snow cones sold, and we feed that value into the model. We are providing
the model with labeled data and therefore, we are performing a supervised
machine learning task.
Unsupervised tasks

A task is considered to be unsupervised if you are using unlabeled data. This

means you don't need to provide the model with any kind of label or
solution while the model is being trained.
Let's take a look at unlabeled data.

 Take a look at the preceding picture. Did you notice the tree in the
picture? What you just did, when you noticed the object in the picture
and identified it as a tree, is called labeling the picture. Unlike you, a
computer just sees that image as a matrix of pixels of varying intensity.
 Since this image does not have the labeling in its original data, it is
considered unlabeled.

How do we further classify tasks when we don’t have a label?

Unsupervised learning involves using data that doesn't have a label. One
common task is called clustering. Clustering helps to determine if there are
any naturally occurring groupings in the data.

Let's look at an example of how clustering works in unlabeled data.

Example: Identifying book micro-genres with unsupervised learning

Imagine that you work for a company that recommends books to readers.
The assumption is that you are fairly confident that micro-genres exist, and
that there is one called Teen Vampire Romance. However, you don’t know
which micro-genres exist specifically, so you can't use supervised
learning techniques.

This is where the unsupervised learning clustering technique might be able

to detect some groupings in the data. The words and phrases used in a
book's description might provide some guidance on its micro-genre.

Classifying based on label type

Initially, we divided tasks based on the presence or absence of labeled data
while training our model. Often, tasks are further defined by the type of
label that is present.

In supervised learning, there are two main identifiers that you will see in
machine learning:

 A categorical label has a discrete set of possible values. In a machine

learning problem in which you want to identify the type of flower
based on a picture, you would train your model using images that
have been labeled with the categories of the flower that you want to
identify. Furthermore, when you work with categorical labels, you
often carry out classification tasks, which are part of the supervised
learning family.
  A continuous (regression) label does not have a discrete set of
possible values, which often means you are working with numerical
data. In the snow cone sales example, we are trying to predict the
number of snow cones sold. Here, our label is a number that could, in
theory, be any value.

In unsupervised learning, clustering is just one example. There are many

other options, such as deep learning.

Congratulations for completing this learning module. In this module, you

learned about labeled data versus unlabeled data, and they play a role in
defining the machine learning task that you are going to use. Furthermore,
you started to explore which machine learning tasks are used to solve
certain kinds of machine learning problems.
Here’s a quick recap of the terms introduced in this lesson:

 Clustering, an unsupervised learning task that helps to determine if

there are any naturally occurring groupings in the data.
 A categorical label has a discrete set of possible values, such as "is a
cat" and "is not a cat".
 A continuous (regression) label does not have a discrete set of
possible values, which means there are potentially possibly an
unlimited number of possibilities.
 Discrete: A term taken from statistics referring to an outcome taking
on only a finite number of values (such as days of the week).
 A label refers to data that already contains the solution.
 Using unlabeled data means you don't need to provide the model
with any kind of label or solution while the model is being trained.
Building the dataset

Building a useful dataset is an essential park of the machine learning

The next step in the machine learning process is to build a dataset that can
be used to solve your machine learning-based problem. Understanding the
data needed helps you select better models and algorithms so you can build
more effective solutions.

The most important step of the machine learning process

Working with data is perhaps the most overlooked—yet most important—

step of the machine learning process. In 2017, an O’Reilly study showed that
machine learning practitioners spend 80% of their time working with their
data.

You can take an entire class just on working with, understanding, and
processing data for machine learning applications. Good, high-quality data is
essential for any kind of machine learning project. Let's explore some of the
common aspects of working with data.

Data collection

Data collection can be as straightforward as running the appropriate SQL

queries or as complicated as building custom web scraper applications to
collect data for your project. You might even have to run a model over your
data to generate needed labels. Here is the fundamental question:
Does the data you've collected match the machine learning task and
problem you have defined?

Data inspection
The quality of your data will ultimately be the largest factor that affects how
well you can expect your model to perform. As you inspect your data, look
for:

 Outliers
 Missing or incomplete values
 Data that needs to be transformed or preprocessed so it's in the
correct format to be used by your model
Summary statistics

 Models can make assumptions about how your data is structured.

 Now that you have some data in hand, it is a good best practice to
check that your data is in line with the underlying assumptions of the
machine learning model that you chose.
 Using statistical tools, you can calculate things like the mean, inner-
quartile range (IQR), and standard deviation. These tools can give you
insights into the scope, scale, and shape of a dataset.

Data visualization
You can use data visualization to see outliers and trends in your data and to
help stakeholders understand your data.
Look at the following two graphs. In the first graph, some data seems to
have clustered into different groups. In the graph immediately preceding it,
some data points might be outliers.

Nice work completing this chapter! There is a lot information in this section.
Let’s review a couple of key parts:

One
You learned that having good data is key to being able to successfully
answer the problem you have defined in your machine learning problem.
Two
To build a good dataset, there are four key aspects to be considered when
working with your data. First, you need to collect the data. Second, you
should inspect your data to check for outliers, missing or incomplete values,
and to see if any kind of data reformatting is required. Third, you should use
summary statistics to understand the scope, scale, and shape of the dataset.
Finally, you should use data visualizations to check for outliers, and to see
trends in your data.

Key terms from this lesson:

 Impute is a common term referring to different statistical tools that

can be used to calculate missing values from your dataset.
 Outliers are data points that are significantly different from other date
in the same sample.

Additional reading
 In machine learning, you use several statistical-based tools to better
understand your data. The sklearn library has many examples and
tutorials, such as this example that demonstrates outlier detection on
a real dataset

Wrap-up
Nice work completing this chapter! There is a lot information in this section.
Let’s review a couple of key parts:

One
You learned that having good data is key to being able to successfully
answer the problem you have defined in your machine learning problem.

Two
To build a good dataset, there are four key aspects to be considered when
working with your data. First, you need to collect the data. Second, you
should inspect your data to check for outliers, missing or incomplete values,
and to see if any kind of data reformatting is required. Third, you should use
summary statistics to understand the scope, scale, and shape of the dataset.
Finally, you should use data visualizations to check for outliers, and to see
trends in your data.

Key terms from this lesson:

 Impute is a common term referring to different statistical tools that

can be used to calculate missing values from your dataset.
 Outliers are data points that are significantly different from other date
in the same sample.

Step 3: Modeling training

Modeling training is a process whereby the model's parameters are
iteratively updated to minimize some loss function that has been previously
defined.

Splitting your dataset

The first step in model training is to randomly split the dataset.
This allows you to keep some data hidden during training, so that the data
can be used to evaluate your model before you put it into production.
Specifically, you do this to test against the bias-variance trade-off. If you're
interested in learning more, see the optional Extended learning section.
Splitting your dataset gives you two sets of data:
  Training dataset: The data on which the model will be trained. Most of
your data will be here. Many developers estimate about 80%.
 Test dataset: The data withheld from the model during training, which
is used to test how well your model will generalize to new data.

The model training algorithm iteratively updates a model's parameters to

minimize some loss function.
Let's define those two terms:

 Model parameters: Model parameters are settings or configurations

that the training algorithm can update to change how the model
behaves. Depending on the context, you’ll also hear other specific
terms used to describe model parameters such as weights and biases.
Weights, which are values that change as the model learns, are more
specific to neural networks.
 Loss function: A loss function is used to codify the model’s distance
from a goal. For example, if you were trying to predict the number of
snow cone sales based on the day’s weather, you would care about
making predictions that are as accurate as possible. So you might
define a loss function to be “the average distance between your
model’s predicted number of snow cone sales and the correct
number.” You can see in the snow cone example; this is the difference
between the two purple dots.
Putting it all together
The end-to-end training process is:

 Feed the training data into the model.

 Compute the loss function on the results.
 Update the model parameters in a direction that reduces loss.

You continue to cycle through these steps until you reach a predefined stop
condition. This might be based on training time, the number of training
cycles, or an even more intelligent or application-aware mechanism.
Remember the following advice when training your model.

1. Practitioners often use machine learning frameworks that already

have working implementations of models and model training
algorithms. You could implement these from scratch, but you probably
won't need to do so unless you’re developing new models or
algorithms.
2. Practitioners use a process called model selection to determine which
model or models to use. The list of established models is constantly
growing, and even seasoned machine learning practitioners try many
different types of models while solving a problem with machine
learning.
3. Hyperparameters are settings on the model that are not changed
during training, but can affect how quickly or how reliably the model
trains, such as the number of clusters the model should identify.
4. Be prepared to iterate.

Pragmatic problem solving with machine learning is rarely an exact science,

and you might have assumptions about your data or problem that turn out
to be false. Don’t get discouraged. Instead, foster a habit of trying new
things, measuring success, and comparing results across iterations.
This information wasn't covered in the video from the previous section, but
it is provided for the advanced reader.

Linear models

One of the most common models covered in introductory coursework,

linear models simply describe the relationship between a set of input
numbers and a set of output numbers through a linear function (think of y =
mx + b or a line on a x vs y chart). Classification tasks often use a strongly
related logistic model, which adds an additional transformation mapping the
output of the linear function to the range [0, 1], interpreted as “probability
of being in the target class.” Linear models are fast to train and give you a
great baseline against which to compare more complex models. A lot of
media buzz is given to more complex models, but for most new problems,
consider starting with a simple model.

Tree-based models

Tree-based models are probably the second most common model type
covered in introductory coursework. They learn to categorize or regress by
building an extremely large structure of nested if/else blocks, splitting the
world into different regions at each if/else block. Training determines exactly
where these splits happen and what value is assigned at each leaf region.
For example, if you’re trying to determine if a light sensor is in sunlight or
shadow, you might train tree of depth 1 with the final learned configuration
being something like if (sensor_value > 0.698), then return 1; else return 0;.
The tree-based model XGBoost is commonly used as an off-the-shelf
implementation for this kind of model and includes enhancements beyond
what is discussed here. Try tree-based models to quickly get a baseline
before moving on to more complex models.

Deep learning models

Extremely popular and powerful, deep learning is a modern approach that is

based around a conceptual model of how the human brain functions. The
model (also called a neural network) is composed of collections of neurons
(very simple computational units) connected together by weights
(mathematical representations of how much information thst is allowed to
flow from one neuron to the next). The process of training involves finding
values for each weight. Various neural network structures have been
determined for modeling different kinds of problems or processing different
kinds of data.
A short (but not complete!) list of noteworthy examples includes:

 FFNN: The most straightforward way of structuring a neural network,

the Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN) structures neurons in a
series of layers, with each neuron in a layer containing weights to all
neurons in the previous layer.
  CNN: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) represent nested filters
over grid-organized data. They are by far the most commonly used
type of model when processing images.
 RNN/LSTM: Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) and the related Long
Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model types are structured to effectively
represent for loops in traditional computing, collecting state while
iterating over some object. They can be used for processing sequences
of data.
 Transformer: A more modern replacement for RNN/LSTMs, the
transformer architecture enables training over larger datasets
involving sequences of data.

Machine learning using Python libraries

 For more classical models (linear, tree-based) as well as a set of

common ML-related tools, take a look at scikit-learn. The web
documentation for this library is also organized for those getting
familiar with space and can be a great place to get familiar with some
extremely useful tools and techniques.
 For deep learning, mxnet, tensorflow, and pytorch are the three most
common libraries. For the purposes of the majority of machine
learning needs, each of these is feature-paired and equivalent.

Wrap-up
Nice working completing this chapter! Let’s review a couple of key parts
from this lesson:

One
The model training algorithm iteratively updates a model's parameters to
minimize some loss function.

Two
During model training, the training data is fed into the model, and then the
loss function is computed based on the results. The model parameters are
then updated in a direction that reduces loss. You will continue to cycle
through these steps until your reach a predefined stop condition.

Key terms from this lesson:

 Hyperparameters are settings on the model that are not changed

during training but can affect how quickly or how reliably the model
trains, such as the number of clusters the model should identify.
 A loss function is used to codify the model’s distance from this goal.
 Training dataset: The data on which the model will be trained. Most of
your data will be here.
 Test dataset: The data withheld from the model during training, which
is used to test how well your model will generalize to new data.
 Model parameters are settings or configurations the training
algorithm can update to change how the model behaves.

2.5 Model evaluation

Evaluating a trained model

After you have collected your data and trained a model, you can start to
evaluate how well your model is performing. The metrics used for
evaluation are likely to be very specific to the problem you defined. As you
grow in your understanding of machine learning, you will be able to explore
a wide variety of metrics that can enable you to evaluate effectively.
Model accuracy is a fairly common evaluation metric. Accuracy is the
fraction of predictions a model gets right.
Here's an example:
Imagine that you build a model to identify a flower as one of two common
species based on measurable details like petal length. You want to know
how often your model predicts the correct species. This would require you
to look at your model's accuracy.

Every step we have gone through is highly iterative and can be changed or
rescoped during the course of a project. At each step, you might find that
you need to go back and reevaluate some assumptions you had in previous
steps. Don't worry! This ambiguity is normal.

This information hasn't been covered in the above video but is provided for the
advanced reader.

Using Log Loss

Let's say you're trying to predict how likely a customer is to buy either a jacket or
t-shirt.
Log loss could be used to understand your model's uncertainty about a given
prediction. In a single instance, your model could predict with 5% certainty that a
customer is going to buy a t-shirt. In another instance, your model could predict
with 80% certainty that a customer is going to buy a t-shirt. Log loss enables you
to measure how strongly the model believes that its prediction is accurate.
In both cases, the model predicts that a customer will buy a t-shirt, but the
model's certainty about that prediction can change.

Model inference
Congratulations! You're ready to deploy your model. Once you have trained
your model, have evaluated its effectiveness, and are satisfied with the
results, you're ready to generate predictions on real-world problems using
unseen data in the field. In machine learning, this process is often
called inference.
Even after you deploy your model, you're always monitoring to make sure
your model is producing the kinds of results that you expect. There may be
times where you reinvestigate the data, modify some of the parameters in
your model training algorithm, or even change the model type used for
training.
Great job getting through all the steps in the machine learning process. Let’s
review some key takeaways from these lessons.
One
Solving problems using machine learning is an evolving and iterative process.
Two
To solve a problem successfully in machine learning finding high quality data
is essential.
Three
To evaluate models, you often use statistical metrics. The metrics you choose
are tailored to a specific use case.

Summary of examples
Through the remainder of the lesson, we will walk through three different case studies. In each
example, you will see how machine learning can be used to solve real-world problems.

Supervised learning
  Using machine learning to predict housing prices in a neighborhood,
based on lot size and the number of bedrooms.

Unsupervised learning

 Using machine learning to isolate micro-genres of books by analyzing

the wording on the back cover description.

Deep neural network

 While this type of task is beyond the scope of this lesson, we wanted
to show you the power and versatility of modern machine learning.
You will see how it can be used to analyze raw images from lab video
footage from security cameras, trying to detect chemical spills.

Example 1: Predicting home prices

House price prediction is one of the most common examples used to
introduce machine learning.

Traditionally, real estate appraisers use many quantifiable details

about a home (such as number of rooms, lot size, and year of
construction) to help them estimate the value of a house.

You detect this relationship and believe that you could use machine
learning to predict home prices.

In the next sections, you will go through the 5 major steps in machine
learning in the context of this example.
Problem
Can we estimate the price of a house based on lot size or the number of
bedrooms?
You access the sale prices for recently sold homes or have them appraised.
Since you have this data, this is a supervised learning task. You want to
predict a continuous numeric value, so this task is also a regression task.

Step 2: Build the dataset

For this project, you need data about home prices, so you do the following
tasks:

 Data collection: You collect numerous examples of homes sold in your

neighborhood within the past year, and pay a real estate appraiser to
appraise the homes whose selling price is not known.
 Data exploration: You confirm that all of your data is numerical
because most machine learning models operate on sequences of
numbers. If there is textual data, you need to transform it into
numbers. You'll see this in the next example.

 Data cleaning: Look for things such as missing information or outliers,

such as the 10-room mansion. You can use several techniques to
handle outliers, but you can also just remove them from your dataset.
You also want to look for trends in your data, so you use data
visualization to help you find them.

You can plot home values against each of your input variables to look for
trends in your data. In the following chart, you see that when lot size
increases, house value increases.

Prior to actually training your model, you need to split your data. The
standard practice is to put 80% of your dataset into a training dataset and
20% into a test dataset.

Linear model selection

As you see in the preceding chart, when lot size increases, home values
increase too. This relationship is simple enough that a linear model can be
used to represent this relationship.
A linear model across a single input variable can be represented as a line. It
becomes a plane for two variables, and then a hyperplane for more than
two variables. The intuition, as a line with a constant slope, doesn't change.
Using a Python library

The Python scikit-learn library has tools that can handle the implementation
of the model training algorithm for you.

Step 4: Model evaluation

One of the most common evaluation metrics in a regression scenario is
called root mean square or RMS. The math is beyond the scope of this
lesson, but RMS can be thought of roughly as the "average error" across
your test dataset, so you want this value to be low.

In the following chart, you can see where the data points are in relation to
the blue line. You want the data points to be as close to the "average" line
as possible, which would mean less net error.

You compute the root mean square between your model’s prediction for a
data point in your test dataset and the true value from your data. This actual
calculation is beyond the scope of this lesson, but it's good to understand
the process at a high level.
Interpreting Results
In general, as your model improves, you see a better RMS result. You may
still not be confident about whether the specific value you’ve computed is
good or bad.

Many machine learning engineers manually count how many predictions

were off by a threshold (for example, $50,000 in this house pricing problem)
to help determine and verify the model's accuracy.

Model inference
Now you are ready to put your model into action. As you can see in the
following image, this means seeing how well it predicts with new data not
seen during model training.
In this example, you saw how you can use machine learning to help predict
home prices.

One
Solving problems using machine learning is an evolving and iterative
process.

Two
To solve a problem successfully in machine learning, finding high quality
data is essential.

Three
To evaluate models, you often use statistical metrics. The metrics you
choose are tailored to a specific use case.

Terminology

 Regression: A common task in supervised machine learning used to

understand the relationship between multiple variables from a
dataset.
 Continuous: Floating-point values with an infinite range of possible
values. This is the opposite of categorical or discrete values, which
take on a limited number of possible values.
 Hyperplane: A mathematical term for a surface that contains more
than two planes
 Plane: A mathematical term for a flat surface (like a piece of paper) on
which two points can be joined by drawing a straight line.

Define the problem

Is it possible to find clusters of similar books based on the presence of
common words in the book descriptions?
You do editorial work for a book recommendation company, and you want
to write an article on the largest book trends of the year. You believe that a
trend called "micro-genres" exists, and you have confidence that you can
use the book description text to identify these micro-genres.

By using an unsupervised machine learning technique called clustering, you

can test your hypothesis that the book description text can be used to
identify these "hidden" micro-genres.

Identify the machine learning task you could use

By using an unsupervised machine learning technique called clustering, you

can test your hypothesis that the book description text can be used to
identify these "hidden" micro-genres.

Earlier in this lesson, you were introduced to the idea of unsupervised

learning. This machine learning task is especially useful when your data is
not labeled.
Build your dataset
To test the hypothesis, you gather book description text for 800 romance
books published in the current year. You plan to use this text as your
dataset.

Data exploration, cleaning, and preprocessing

In the lesson about building your dataset, you learned about how
sometimes it is necessary to change the format of the data that you want to
use. In this case study, we need use a process called vectorization.
Vectorization is a process whereby words are converted into numbers.

Data cleaning and exploration

For this project, you believe capitalization and verb tense will not matter,
and therefore you remove capitals and convert all verbs to the same tense
using a Python library built for processing human language. You also remove
punctuation and words you don’t think have useful meaning,
like 'a' and 'the'. The machine learning community refers to these words
as stop words.

Data preprocessing
Before you can train the model, you need to do a type of data preprocessing
called data vectorization, which is used to convert text into numbers.
As shown in the following image, you transform this book description text
into what is called a bag of words representation, so that it is
understandable by machine learning models.

How the bag of words representation works is beyond the scope of this
lesson. If you are interested in learning more, see the What's next section at
the end of this chapter.

Train the model

Now you are ready to train your model.

You pick a common cluster-finding model called k-means. In this model, you
can change a model parameter, k, to be equal to how many clusters the
model will try to find in your dataset.

Your data is unlabeled and you don't how many micro-genres might exist.
So, you train your model multiple times using different values for k each
time.

What does this even mean? In the following graphs, you can see examples
of when k=2 and when k=3.
During the model evaluation phase, you plan on using a metric to find which
value for k is the most appropriate.

Model evaluation
In machine learning, numerous statistical metrics or methods are available
to evaluate a model. In this use case, the silhouette coefficient is a good
choice. This metric describes how well your data was clustered by the
model. To find the optimal number of clusters, you plot the silhouette
coefficient as shown in the following image below. You find the optimal
value is when k=19.
Often, machine learning practitioners do a manual evaluation of the model's
findings.

You find one cluster that contains a large collection of books that you can
categorize as "paranormal teen romance." This trend is known in your
industry, and therefore you feel somewhat confident in your machine
learning approach. You don’t know if every cluster is going to be as cohesive
as this, but you decide to use this model to see if you can find anything
interesting about which to write an article.

As you inspect the different clusters found when k=19, you find a
surprisingly large cluster of books. Here's an example from fictionalized
cluster #7.

As you inspect the preceding table, you can see that most of these text
snippets indicate that the characters are in some kind of long-distance
relationship. You see a few other self-consistent clusters and feel you now
have enough useful data to begin writing an article on unexpected modern
romance micro-genres.
In this example, you saw how you can use machine learning to help find
micro-genres in books by using the text found on the back of the book. Here
is summary of key moments from the lesson you just finished.

One
For some applications of machine learning, you need to not only clean and
preprocess the data but also convert the data into a format that is machine
readable. In this example, the words were converted into numbers through
a process called data vectorization.

Two
Solving problems in machine learning requires iteration. In this example you
saw how it was necessary to train the model multiples times for different
values of k. After training your model over multiple iterations you saw how
the silhouette coefficient could be use to determine the optimal value for k.

Three
During model inference you continued to inspect the clusters for accuracy to
ensure that your model was generative useful predictions.

Terminology

 Bag of words: A technique used to extract features from text. It counts

how many times a word appears in a document (corpus), and then
transforms that information into a dataset.

 Data vectorization: A process that converts non-numeric data into a

numerical format so that it can be used by a machine learning model.

 Silhouette coefficients: A score from -1 to 1 describing the clusters

found during modeling. A score near zero indicates overlapping
clusters, and scores less than zero indicate data points assigned to incorrect
 clusters. A score approaching 1 indicates successful identification of
discrete non-overlapping clusters.

 Stop words: A list of words removed by natural language processing

tools when building your dataset. There is no single universal list of
stop words used by all-natural language processing tools.

3.3 Using ML to detect spills

Defining the problem
Imagine you run a company that offers specialized on-site janitorial services.
One client - an industrial chemical plant - requires a fast response for spills
and other health hazards. You realize if you could automatically detect spills
using the plant's surveillance system, you could mobilize your janitorial team
faster.

Machine learning could be a valuable tool to solve this problem.

Choosing a model

As shown in the image above, your goal will be to predict if each image
belongs to one of the following classes:

 Contains spill
 Does not contain spill

Building a dataset
Collecting

 Using historical data, as well as safely staged spills, quickly build a

collection of images that contain both spills and non-spills in multiple
lighting conditions and environments.

Exploring and cleaning

  Go through all of the photos to ensure that the spill is clearly in the
shot. There are Python tools and other techniques available to
improve image quality, which you can use later if you determine that
you need to iterate.

Data vectorization (converting to numbers)

 Many models require numerical data, so you must transform all of

your image data needs to be transformed into a numerical format.
Python tools can help you do this automatically.
 In the following image, you can see how each pixel in the image
immediately below can be represented in the image beneath it using a
number between 0 and 1, with 0 being completely black and 1 being
completely white.

Split the data

 Split your image data into a training dataset and a test dataset.

Model Training
Traditionally, solving this problem would require hand-engineering features
on top of the underlying pixels (for example, locations of prominent edges
and corners in the image), and then training a model on these features.
Today, deep neural networks are the most common tool used for solving
this kind of problem. Many deep neural network models are structured to
learn the features on top of the underlying pixels so you don’t have to learn
them. You’ll have a chance to take a deeper look at this in the next lesson,
so we’ll keep things high-level for now.

CNN (convolutional neural network)

Neural networks are beyond the scope of this lesson, but you can think of
them as a collection of very simple models connected together. These
simple models are called neurons, and the connections between these
models are trainable model parameters called weights.
Convolutional neural networks are a special type of neural network that is
particularly good at processing images.

Model evaluation
As you saw in the last example, there are many different statistical metrics
that you can use to evaluate your model. As you gain more experience in
machine learning, you will learn how to research which metrics can help you
evaluate your model most effectively. Here's a list of common metrics:

 Accuracy
 Confusion matrix
 F1 score
 False positive rate
 False negative rate
 Log loss
 Negative predictive value
 Precession
 Recall
 ROC Curve
 Specificity
In cases such as this, accuracy might not be the best evaluation mechanism.

Why not? The model will see the does not contain spill' class almost all the
time, so any model that just predicts no spill most of the time will seem
pretty accurate.
What you really care about is an evaluation tool that rarely misses a real
spill.

After doing some internet sleuthing, you realize this is a common problem
and that precision and recall will be effective. Think of precision as
answering the question, "Of all predictions of a spill, how many were right?"
and recall as answering the question, "Of all actual spills, how many did we
detect?"
Manual evaluation plays an important role. If you are unsure if your staged
spills are sufficiently realistic compared to actual spills, you can get a better
sense how well your model performs with actual spills by finding additional
examples from historical records. This allows you to confirm that your model
is performing satisfactorily.

Model inference
The model can be deployed on a system that enables you to run machine
learning workloads such as AWS Panorama.

Thankfully, most of the time, the results will be from the class does not
contain spill.
But, when the class contains spill' is detected, a simple paging system could
alert the team to respond.

In this example, you saw how you can use machine learning to help detect
spills in a work environment. This example also used a modern machine
learning technique called a convolutional neural network (CNN).

Here is summary of key moments from the lesson that you just finished.
One
For some applications of machine learning, you need to use more
complicated techniques to solve the problem. While modern neural
networks are a powerful tool, don’t forget their cost in terms of being easily
explained.

Two
High quality data once again was very important to the success of this
application, to the point where even staging some fake data was required.
Once again, the process of data vectorization was required so it was
important to convert the images into numbers so that they could be used by
the neural network.

Three
During model inference you continued to inspect the predictions for
accuracy. It is especially important in this case because you created some
fake data to use when training your model.

Terminology

Neural networks: a collection of very simple models connected together.

 These simple models are called neurons.

 The connections between these models are trainable model
parameters called weights.

Convolutional neural networks(CNN): a special type of neural network

particularly good at processing images.