Lecture1-2What is Machine Learning?

From Learning to Machine Learning

Learning:

Acquiring skills with experience accumulated from observations
observation -> learning -> skill

Machine Learning

Acquiring skills with experience accumulated/computed from data
computers simply simulate the learning process of human beings.
data -> ML -> skill

So what is skill?

Skill: Improve some performance measure

data -> ML -> performance measure

An application in computational finance

stock data -> ML -> more investment gain

Another application: Tree Recognition

• Define trees and hard-program is Difficult
• Learn from data(observations) and recognize is Easy
• “ML-based recognition system” can be easier to build than hand-programmed(rule-based) system

ML is an alternative route to build complicated systems.

Use scenarios

• when human cannot program the system manually(navigating on mars)
• when human cannot “define the solution” easily(speech/visual recognition)
• when needing rapid decisions that humans cannot do(HFT)
• when needing to be user-oriented in a massive scale(consumer-targetd marketing)

Machine Learning(redefinition)

improve some performance measure with experience computed from data
data -> ML -> imporved performance measure

Feasibility

• exists some underlying pattern to be learned(performance measure can be improved)
• no programmable(no easy) definition(ML is needed)
• there is data about the pattern(resources to learn)