Hi welcome to the article on what is machine learning.
Leaning Objectives:
At the end of this topic you will be able to:
- Define Machine Learning.
- List a few application of machine learning from your daily lives.
Define Machine Learning
Looking at the term, we can say "machine learning is something related to leaning of the machines or computers" which is infect correct.
By definition "Machine Learning is the ability of Machines, that is, computers to learn and improve from their past experience or data, without being explicitly programmed".
For better understanding let suppose you got admission into a new college and you are not sure about the fastest way to reach your college. On day 1, you take a bus and then an auto to reach your college and it takes you 50 minutes. Next day that is on day 2, you take a metro train and then auto to reach your college and you notice that it takes you 40 minutes. And on day 3 you are getting late for your college, you decide to take an auto directly to reach your college and say it takes 35 minutes.
Now suppose on day 4 you are running late for college, and now you wants an avail the modes of transport which will takes the least time, so which option would you choose. Definitely you are going to choose option 3 or the mode of convenience used on day 3 because you learnt from your previous experiences that this is the fastest way to get to college. And you are just using that knowledge for your future actions.
Just like a human brain analysis each event or scenario and learns from them (Auto takes least time to reach college) and then improves and makes changes for the next occurrences.
Machines also learn from available data or events. Identify patterns and then makes decisions to improve or predict the outcome automatically.
We can refresh our machine learning definition as "Machine learning is the ablility of machines (i.e., computers or ideally computer programs) to learn from the past behavior or data and to predict dthe future outcomes without being explicitly programmed to do so".
Application of Machine Learning
We have understood what is machine learning. Now we will discuss few application of machine Learning application in our day to day life.
- Facebook Newsfeed
- Facebook Photo Auto-tagging feature
- Product recommendations by shopping portals
In todays digital world we are surrounded by data everywhere. Be it is working in departmental store or making a purchase online or searching anything on google or using social media platforms like facebook, instagram etc.
There is a huge amount of data being generated everyday and Machine learning algorithms are constantly analyzing and learning from the data to improve their future predictions and outcomes automatically. We will discuss about data in more detail little later in the next article. Lets continue our discussion on application of machine learning.
1. Facebook Newsfeed
One of the common application of machine learning is facebook newsfeed. This program uses machine learning to personalize the newsfeed for each facebook user. Based on the users action like commenting or liking certain news items shown in the feed, the newsfeed decides to show that user more or less similar kinds of news items in the future automatically.
So what exactly happens behind the scene. The newsfeed program learns about the behavior of the user based on the available facebook data or events for that user and makes the prediction on which newsfeed show or hide based on that user's activity.
2. Facebook Photo Auto-tagging feature
Let have a look at one more facebook feature which uses machine learning. When we upload a group photo of our friends on facebook what we find is that facebook tags some of our friends automatically. So how is this thing possible when we haven't tag them. The answer to this again is machine learning.
Previously we must have uploaded some photos where we may have explicitly tag those friends or someone else might have tag them in some of their photo in facebook. Facebook learn about those tag faces using Facial Recognition Algorithm (A part of machine learning) and then recognize those faces and tag them in a newly uploaded picture automatically.
3. Product recommendations by shopping portals
One example of machine learning is when you browse for a particular product in any of the online portals like Amazon or Flipkart. You get to see recommendations or comparisons of similar products which you might be interested in. Or suppose you are buying a mobile phone the portal recommends that you buy a tempered glass and mobile cover along with the phone as most of the others customers also have bought them together.
So you must be thinking how do shopping portals know about the products you would be interested in? or how did the portal becomes so smart or know about yours likes and products you would be interested in?
The answer is again machine learning. The online portal use machine learning and learnt about your likes and purchases based on your browsing and buying history. Based on this portal was able to recommend the products for you. Suppose you do not like the recommended products and browse for some other products, the portal using machine learning will learn about this will make adjustments to recommended list on a real time bases.
Advanced Applications of Machine Learning
Machine learning is available everywhere. And it has become an integral part of our daily life.
- Identifying Frauds in Banking
- Sentiment Analysis
- Amazon Go
- Chatbots
- Self Driven Cars
Some more advanced applications of machine learning are identifying frauds in Banking. Bases on transaction behavior of the customers. Sentiment Analysis that is finding out the positive or negative sentiment about the product or a movie or an event based on the social media data. Amazon Go that is an automated grocery store where no human intervention is required. Customer just needs to select the product and walk out of the store the rest would be taking care of automatically based on machine learning. Chatbots that is a program that automatically replies to the customers queries. And Self Driven Cars the cars being driven by machines and require no human drivers.
The applications of machine learning is growing day by day. Machines are getting smarter and predicting accurately and the day is not far when we will be competing with machines and there would be minimalistic human efforts in world. That is in this article. In next article you will learn about how machine learning works.
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