Some of the most important directed techniques include classification, estimation, and forecasting. Classification means to examine a new case and assign it to a predefined discrete class, for example, assigning keywords to articles and assigning customers to known segments. Next is estimation, where you are trying to estimate the value of a continuous variable of a new case. You can, for example, estimate the number of children or the family income. Forecasting is somewhat similar to classification and estimation. The main difference is that you can't check the forecast value at the time of the forecast. Of course, you can evaluate it if you just wait long enough. Examples include forecasting which customers will leave in the future, which customers will order additional services, and the sales amount in a specific region at a specific time in the future.
After you train models, you use them to perform predictions. In most classification and other directed...