Book Image

Hands-On Machine Learning with Microsoft Excel 2019

By : Julio Cesar Rodriguez Martino
Book Image

Hands-On Machine Learning with Microsoft Excel 2019

By: Julio Cesar Rodriguez Martino

Overview of this book

We have made huge progress in teaching computers to perform difficult tasks, especially those that are repetitive and time-consuming for humans. Excel users, of all levels, can feel left behind by this innovation wave. The truth is that a large amount of the work needed to develop and use a machine learning model can be done in Excel. The book starts by giving a general introduction to machine learning, making every concept clear and understandable. Then, it shows every step of a machine learning project, from data collection, reading from different data sources, developing models, and visualizing the results using Excel features and offerings. In every chapter, there are several examples and hands-on exercises that will show the reader how to combine Excel functions, add-ins, and connections to databases and to cloud services to reach the desired goal: building a full data analysis flow. Different machine learning models are shown, tailored to the type of data to be analyzed. At the end of the book, the reader is presented with some advanced use cases using Automated Machine Learning, and artificial neural network, which simplifies the analysis task and represents the future of machine learning.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Machine Learning Basics
4
Section 2: Data Collection and Preparation
8
Section 3: Analytics and Machine Learning Models
11
Section 4: Data Visualization and Advanced Machine Learning

Summary

In this chapter, we briefly discussed the learning process for machines, which, to some extent, mimics that of human beings. We described how a model, which is a simplified representation of the problem that we want to solve, can be used to apply machine learning to find a solution.

Using a linear regression model, we built a simple supervised predictive model and explained how to use it. We then discussed the difference between regression and classification, and showed the properties of the input variables and features.

Underfitting and overfitting are two of the main concerns when training a machine learning model. We explained what they are and suggested methods to avoid them.

Finally, different types of target variables require different algorithms and evaluation methods to test the quality of the model – we discussed this in detail in the final sections.

In...