Machine learning is a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building. It is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention. This interesting topic came to us from Information Week in their article, “Finding the Great Predictors for Machine Learning.”

While AI is the broad science of mimicking human abilities, machine learning is a specific subset of AI that trains a machine how to learn.

Planning machine learning models can often mean discovering ways to refine the number of variables that inputs data to that model. Factor analysis can be used to eliminate variables that are not influencing the model. 

Resurging interest in machine learning is due to the same factors that have made data mining and Bayesian analysis more popular than ever, such as growing volumes and varieties of available data, computational processing that is cheaper and more powerful, and affordable data storage.

Melody K. Smith

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