- Link: Steps in ML
- Author: Abdul Rauf
- Publication date: Apr 1, 2024
Machine learning (ML) gives computers the power to learn without being explicitly programmed. If you’re curious about how it works, I’ll break down the key steps in a simple way and throw in a real-world example using a music company.
Step 1: Data Collection
Think of data as the food that powers your machine learning model. The better quality and quantity of data you have, the smarter your model becomes.
Music Company Example: A music company might collect data about user listening habits: song preferences, genres, artists, time of day they listen, etc. In addition to these, they could now also collect data from social media platforms, user reviews, and even physiological responses while listening to music, like heart rate or mood indicators. Below is the pic which you the example of some music company site and get idea how can they get data from the user
Step 2: Exploring Data
Once you have your data, get to know it! This includes:
Cleaning: Real-world data is messy. You might need to remove errors, handle missing values, or format the data properly. With advancements, there are now automated tools and algorithms that assist in cleaning large datasets, saving time and effort.
Visualization: Charts and graphs help you spot patterns, trends, and relationships in your data. With newer visualization techniques such as interactive visualizations and augmented reality tools, exploring data has become even more insightful and engaging.
Step 3: Modifying Data
This step prepares your data for the model’s consumption. Sometimes called ‘data preprocessing’ or ‘feature engineering’, it might include:
Feature Selection: Choose the most important parts of your data for the model to focus on. With advanced feature selection algorithms, models can now automatically identify relevant features, reducing manual effort.
Feature Scaling: Standardize the range of your data features. Now, there are more sophisticated scaling techniques available that adapt to the distribution of data, ensuring better model performance.
Music Company Example: The company could create new features based on listening habits, like the ‘energy level’ or ‘mood’ of their users’ favorite songs. Additionally, they can now employ advanced natural language processing techniques to extract sentiment from user reviews or social media comments about songs.
Generally most of time of an ml engineer (like 80%) goes to work on these first three steps .
Step 4: Finding a Base Model
Machine learning involves various algorithms. Think of these algorithms as recipes your model can follow. Some common options are:
Linear Regression: Good for predicting continuous values (e.g., predicting song popularity). With advancements, linear regression models now incorporate regularization techniques to prevent overfitting.
Decision Trees: Great for classification tasks (e.g., grouping songs into genres). Ensemble methods like Random Forests and Gradient Boosting have gained popularity for their improved performance over traditional decision trees.
Neural Networks: Powerful for complex problems (e.g., generating new music pieces). With the rise of deep learning, neural networks now have more layers and complex architectures, enabling them to handle intricate tasks such as image and audio recognition.
Step 5: Training and Iterating
This is where the magic happens! Training is like teaching your model with examples.
Split Data: Divide your data into a training set (for learning) and a testing set (for evaluation). Advanced techniques like cross-validation ensure better estimation of model performance.
Feed the Model: Give the model the training data and let it find patterns. With the availability of high-performance computing resources, models can now process larger datasets and train faster.
Evaluate: Use the testing set to see how well the model performs. Evaluation metrics have evolved to capture different aspects of model performance, such as precision, recall, and F1-score.
Tweak and Repeat: Adjust the model’s settings or algorithm, then retrain. This is an ongoing process! Automated hyperparameter optimization techniques help in fine-tuning models efficiently.
Music Company Example: The company feeds the model data about listening habits, user demographics, and song features, and the model tries to predict which songs a user might like. They evaluate and refine the model using advanced techniques such as reinforcement learning and online learning, to continuously improve its recommendations.
Step 6: Deployment
Once your model is ready, it’s time to put it to work! This might involve:
Web Application: Create a website where users get song recommendations. With advancements in web development frameworks and cloud computing, deploying web applications has become more streamlined and scalable.
Mobile App: Develop an app for personalized music suggestions. Mobile app development platforms now offer robust tools for integrating machine learning models into mobile applications, providing seamless user experiences.
API: Allow other developers to use your model for their own applications. APIs now come with extensive documentation and support, making it easier for developers to integrate machine learning functionality into their software products.
Music Company Example: The deployed model powers the company’s music recommendation system, delighting users with personalized playlists across various platforms, including web, mobile apps, and smart devices. The system also incorporates feedback loops to continuously adapt to users’ changing preferences and behaviors.
Machine learning is a vast and amazing field. This was a quick breakdown — there’s always more to learn!
I hope this explanation made machine learning less intimidating. If you’re interested in getting hands-on, there are tons of online resources and tutorials to explore.