We give a simple explanation of the interrelated machine learning techniques called kernel methods and support vector machines. We hope to characterize and de-mystify some of the properties of these methods. To do this we work some examples and draw a few analogies. The familiar no matter how wonderful is not perceived as mystical. Read more…
Living in the age of big data we ask what to do when we have the good fortune to be presented with a huge amount of supervised training data? Most often at large scale we are presented with the un-supervised problems of characterization and information extraction; but some problem domains offer an almost limitless supply of supervised training data (such as using older data to build models that predict the near future). Having too much training data is a good problem to have and there are ways to use traditional methods (like logistic regression) at this scale. We present an “out of core” logistic regression implementation and a quick example in Apache Hadoop running on Amazon Elastic MapReduce. This presentation assumes familiarity with Unix style command lines, Java and Hadoop. Read more…
Having a bit of history as both a user of machine learning and a researcher in the field I feel I have developed a useful perspective on the various trends, flavors and nuances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. I thought I would take a moment to outline a bit of it here and demonstrate how what we call artificial intelligence is becoming more statistical in nature. Read more…
We describe the “the local to global principle.” It is a principle used to break algorithmic problem solving into two distinct phases (local criticism followed by global solution) and is an aid both in the design and in the application of algorithms. Instead of giving a formal definition of the principle we quickly define it and discuss a few examples and methods. We have produced both a stand-alone PDF (more legible) and a HTML/blog form (more skimable).
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REPOST (now in HTML in addition to the original PDF).
This paper demonstrates and explains some of the basic techniques used in data mining. It also serves as an example of some of the kinds of analyses and projects Win Vector LLC engages in. Read more…