How does machine learning work? I’ve seen plenty of videos but after a certain point, I realize that I am not learning anything because they make a lot of references to weird mathematical symbols and concepts I never learned/forgot.
In: Technology
Computers determine if something is true by performing a calculation – basically putting data into a formula and computing the result. Normally humans program the formula and the computer just does the calculation. You can imagine if the result of the formula is positive the answer is “true”. Computer learning is having the computer modify its own equation to get more accurate answers.
Machine learning works by giving a computer a formula with variables that the computer can weight. Meaning a computer can decide for each variable whether it affects the result and by how much. And the computer gets a set of data with a known answer.
So imagine a formula for determining if a person will live. The formula has variables for height, weight, is breathing, heart is beating, and has cancer.
The computer creates two versions of the formula, randomly setting the weights for the different variables, runs the data through the formula and sees if the result matches the known answer for that data. So if it runs the formula for someone who dies does the formula show that the person dies?
The computer then sees which version of the formula was the most accurate. It takes that version of the formula, modifies it slightly but randomly, and tries again.
Each time it gets a slightly more accurate version of the formula. It may never get a 100% accurate version of the formula. It just gets the formula as accurate as it can given the data it has.
In the case of the will they live formula, it should eventually figure out that height and weight matter very little and that breathing and heart beating are almost required for the person to live.
The key to machine learning is that a computer can modify the formula and run a test hundreds or thousands of times per minute. So it is not smart, it is just fast.
Latest Answers