Book Image

Applied Unsupervised Learning with Python

By : Benjamin Johnston, Aaron Jones, Christopher Kruger
Book Image

Applied Unsupervised Learning with Python

By: Benjamin Johnston, Aaron Jones, Christopher Kruger

Overview of this book

Unsupervised learning is a useful and practical solution in situations where labeled data is not available. Applied Unsupervised Learning with Python guides you in learning the best practices for using unsupervised learning techniques in tandem with Python libraries and extracting meaningful information from unstructured data. The book begins by explaining how basic clustering works to find similar data points in a set. Once you are well-versed with the k-means algorithm and how it operates, you’ll learn what dimensionality reduction is and where to apply it. As you progress, you’ll learn various neural network techniques and how they can improve your model. While studying the applications of unsupervised learning, you will also understand how to mine topics that are trending on Twitter and Facebook and build a news recommendation engine for users. Finally, you will be able to put your knowledge to work through interesting activities such as performing a Market Basket Analysis and identifying relationships between different products. By the end of this book, you will have the skills you need to confidently build your own models using Python.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Applied Unsupervised Learning with Python
Preface

Introduction


Let's consider an imaginary scenario: a new disease has begun spreading through numerous communities in the country that you live in and the government is trying to figure out how to confront this health emergency. Critical to any plan to confront this health emergency is epidemiological knowledge, including where the patients are located and how the disease is moving. The ability to locate and quantify problem areas (which are classically referred to as hotspots) can help health professionals, policy makers, and emergency response teams craft the most effective and efficient strategies for combating the disease. This scenario highlights one of the many applications of hotspot modeling.

Hotspot modeling is an approach that is used to identify how a population is distributed across a geographical area; for example, how the population of individuals infected with the previously mentioned disease is spread across the country. The creation of this distribution relies on the availability...