What is machine learning?
Personal story - When I googled machine learning for the first time, I was bombarded with great piece of content about machine learning but they were way too technical for a new person to understand them. So, I decided to put them in simple terms so people who have 0 technical knowledge or understanding can learn about them!
There is a new buzz word in town machine learning which means:-
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence in the field of computer science that often uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to "learn" (i.e., progressively improve performance on a specific task) with data, without being explicitly programmed. (source - wikipedia)
But this definition is very hard to understand, so I will put it in simple english
Machine learning, when a machine uses data to predict the next step without programming it
Let us understand this with an Example :-
Suppose you want to learn how to drive!
I will tell you, what is an accelerator and what it is use for, so for break, clutch and gears. Now we will go to open space and practise and learn how to use them. Now if you are a normal human being like me, you will take around 10 - 14 days to learn to drive in an open space. You will be familiar with concept of accelerator, break, clutch and gears.
Now during that training period, you will make a lot of mistakes, and you will learn from them and gradually you will stop making less mistakes!
One day, you will tagged a good driver, you will get a license and you will be on your way to a long drive with your friends(if you are single) or with the person you care about.
Now what just happened?
Some time ago you were not able to start the car but now you are taking people with you for a long drive?
You fed your brain in bits of information about accelerator, break, clutch and gears about the car and you also fed your brain with what are right combination and when to apply them respectively
This is machine learning for computers / machines!
Yes, simple as it may sound but this is what it is.
You take a new machine, you feed it with data, you practices with machine and generate new data and you repeat it again and again until your machine becomes master of it!
Take a look at a simple example what machine learning can do?
What was your highest score in flappy bird?
Now imagine if we add tell a machine to learn how to play flappy bird? Think about what could happen? Watch the video to find out!
Flappy bird score more than 2000000 Points After 86 Generations
Present day examples of services using machine learning?
Believe it or not, you are already interacting with services / products which are using machine learning Examples
- Amazon using customer data to suggest products they can buy
- YouTube suggesting users to video recommended for them!
- Facebook suggesting you friends!
I hope in this post, I've cleared your doubts about what exactly is machine learning!
Stay in touch for the next post!
