Last Updated on August 15, 2020 Decision Trees are an important type of algorithm for predictive modeling machine learning. The classical decision tree algorithms have been around for decades and modern variations like random forest are among the most powerful techniques available. In this post you will discover the humble decision tree algorithm known by it’s more modern name CART which stands for Classification And Regression Trees. After reading this post, you will know: The many names used to describe the […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 Naive Bayes is a simple but surprisingly powerful algorithm for predictive modeling. In this post you will discover the Naive Bayes algorithm for classification. After reading this post, you will know: The representation used by naive Bayes that is actually stored when a model is written to a file. How a learned model can be used to make predictions. How you can learn a naive Bayes model from training data. How to best prepare […]

Last Updated on August 12, 2019 Naive Bayes is a very simple classification algorithm that makes some strong assumptions about the independence of each input variable. Nevertheless, it has been shown to be effective in a large number of problem domains. In this post you will discover the Naive Bayes algorithm for categorical data. After reading this post, you will know. How to work with categorical data for Naive Bayes. How to prepare the class and conditional probabilities for a Naive […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 In this post you will discover the k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) algorithm for classification and regression. After reading this post you will know. The model representation used by KNN. How a model is learned using KNN (hint, it’s not). How to make predictions using KNN The many names for KNN including how different fields refer to it. How to prepare your data to get the most from KNN. Where to look to learn more about […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 A downside of K-Nearest Neighbors is that you need to hang on to your entire training dataset. The Learning Vector Quantization algorithm (or LVQ for short) is an artificial neural network algorithm that lets you choose how many training instances to hang onto and learns exactly what those instances should look like. In this post you will discover the Learning Vector Quantization algorithm. After reading this post you will know: The representation used by […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 Support Vector Machines are perhaps one of the most popular and talked about machine learning algorithms. They were extremely popular around the time they were developed in the 1990s and continue to be the go-to method for a high-performing algorithm with little tuning. In this post you will discover the Support Vector Machine (SVM) machine learning algorithm. After reading this post you will know: How to disentangle the many names used to refer to […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 Random Forest is one of the most popular and most powerful machine learning algorithms. It is a type of ensemble machine learning algorithm called Bootstrap Aggregation or bagging. In this post you will discover the Bagging ensemble algorithm and the Random Forest algorithm for predictive modeling. After reading this post you will know about: The bootstrap method for estimating statistical quantities from samples. The Bootstrap Aggregation algorithm for creating multiple different models from a […]

Last Updated on August 15, 2020 Boosting is an ensemble technique that attempts to create a strong classifier from a number of weak classifiers. In this post you will discover the AdaBoost Ensemble method for machine learning. After reading this post, you will know: What the boosting ensemble method is and generally how it works. How to learn to boost decision trees using the AdaBoost algorithm. How to make predictions using the learned AdaBoost model. How to best prepare your […]

Last Updated on August 12, 2019 There are a lot of machine learning algorithms and each algorithm is an island of research. You have to choose the level of detail that you study machine learning algorithms. There is a sweet spot if you are a developer interested in applied predictive modeling. This post describes that sweet spot and gives you a template that you can use to quickly understand any machine learning algorithm. Kick-start your project with my new book […]