4.1. Machine Learning

Learning Outcome

Students will be able to define machine learning and statistical learning, as well as differentiate between supervised and unsupervised learning.

Sample Tasks

• Identify, or give an example of, an unsupervised learning technique.

• Use a package such as caret in R to perform a machine learning algorithm.

[OhioDoHEducation21]

Our first reading, from the Python Data Science Handbook [Van16], gives an overview of different types of machine learning.

• 5. Machine Learning

  • What Is Machine Learning?

Reading Question

• What is the difference between supervised learning and unsupervised learning? Give an example of each.

Our second reading is Wikipedia’s entry Statistical learning theory, which describes similar problems from a different angle.

Reading Question

• What is the difference between Machine Learning and Statistical Learning?

Our third reading, also from the Python Data Science Handbook [Van16], gives on overview of the sklearn library of machine learning algorithms.

• Introducing Scikit-Learn

Reading Questions

• What does API stand for?

• What is a model?

• What is a hyperparameter?