Why machine learning?
While we have given some examples on why you need machine learning, it might be helpful to look at some of the sample use cases of machine learning. Machine learning is used by us on a daily basis from fraud detection, banking, credit risk assessment, to predicting customer churn and sales volumes. People who are from a statistics background might say, "Hey - I have done all of that using simple statistics". The answer is that you have probably used a lot of the techniques that we will discuss in this book using a different name, as there is a huge overlap between statistics, data mining, and machine learning.
Some example use cases include:
- Credit risk: To predict how likely is it for the borrower to meet its debt obligations under the agreed terms, financial institutions need to manage the credit risk inherent in the portfolio, in addition to the risks on individual credits or transactions.
- Self-driving cars: They are the talk of the town, with everyone planning...