Book Image

Machine Learning with R - Third Edition

By : Brett Lantz
Book Image

Machine Learning with R - Third Edition

By: Brett Lantz

Overview of this book

Machine learning, at its core, is concerned with transforming data into actionable knowledge. R offers a powerful set of machine learning methods to quickly and easily gain insight from your data. Machine Learning with R, Third Edition provides a hands-on, readable guide to applying machine learning to real-world problems. Whether you are an experienced R user or new to the language, Brett Lantz teaches you everything you need to uncover key insights, make new predictions, and visualize your findings. This new 3rd edition updates the classic R data science book to R 3.6 with newer and better libraries, advice on ethical and bias issues in machine learning, and an introduction to deep learning. Find powerful new insights in your data; discover machine learning with R.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Machine Learning with R - Third Edition
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
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Index

Understanding nearest neighbor classification


In a single sentence, nearest neighbor classifiers are defined by their characteristic of classifying unlabeled examples by assigning them the class of similar labeled examples. This is analogous to the dining experience described in the chapter introduction, in which a person identifies new foods through comparison to those previously encountered. With nearest neighbor classification, computers apply a human-like ability to recall past experiences to make conclusions about current circumstances. Despite the simplicity of this idea, nearest neighbor methods are extremely powerful. They have been used successfully for:

  • Computer vision applications, including optical character recognition and facial recognition in both still images and video

  • Recommendation systems that predict whether a person will enjoy a movie or song

  • Identifying patterns in genetic data to detect specific proteins or diseases

In general, nearest neighbor classifiers are well suited...