Book Image

Mastering Machine Learning Algorithms

Book Image

Mastering Machine Learning Algorithms

Overview of this book

Machine learning is a subset of AI that aims to make modern-day computer systems smarter and more intelligent. The real power of machine learning resides in its algorithms, which make even the most difficult things capable of being handled by machines. However, with the advancement in the technology and requirements of data, machines will have to be smarter than they are today to meet the overwhelming data needs; mastering these algorithms and using them optimally is the need of the hour. Mastering Machine Learning Algorithms is your complete guide to quickly getting to grips with popular machine learning algorithms. You will be introduced to the most widely used algorithms in supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised machine learning, and will learn how to use them in the best possible manner. Ranging from Bayesian models to the MCMC algorithm to Hidden Markov models, this book will teach you how to extract features from your dataset and perform dimensionality reduction by making use of Python-based libraries such as scikit-learn v0.19.1. You will also learn how to use Keras and TensorFlow 1.x to train effective neural networks. If you are looking for a single resource to study, implement, and solve end-to-end machine learning problems and use-cases, this is the book you need.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
13
Deep Belief Networks
Index

k-Nearest Neighbors


This algorithm belongs to a particular family called instance-based (the methodology is called instance-based learning). It differs from other approaches because it doesn't work with an actual mathematical model. On the contrary, the inference is performed by direct comparison of new samples with existing ones (which are defined as instances). KNN is an approach that can be easily employed to solve clustering, classification, and regression problems (even if, in this case, we are going to consider only the first technique). The main idea behind the clustering algorithm is very simple. Let's consider a data generating process pdata and a finite a dataset drawn from this distribution:

Each sample has a dimensionality equal to N. We can now introduce a distance function d(x1, x2), which in the majority of cases can be generalized with the Minkowski distance:

When p = 2, dp represents the classical Euclidean distance, that is normally the default choice. In particular cases...