Book Image

Machine Learning Algorithms - Second Edition

Book Image

Machine Learning Algorithms - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Machine learning has gained tremendous popularity for its powerful and fast predictions with large datasets. However, the true forces behind its powerful output are the complex algorithms involving substantial statistical analysis that churn large datasets and generate substantial insight. This second edition of Machine Learning Algorithms walks you through prominent development outcomes that have taken place relating to machine learning algorithms, which constitute major contributions to the machine learning process and help you to strengthen and master statistical interpretation across the areas of supervised, semi-supervised, and reinforcement learning. Once the core concepts of an algorithm have been covered, you’ll explore real-world examples based on the most diffused libraries, such as scikit-learn, NLTK, TensorFlow, and Keras. You will discover new topics such as principal component analysis (PCA), independent component analysis (ICA), Bayesian regression, discriminant analysis, advanced clustering, and gaussian mixture. By the end of this book, you will have studied machine learning algorithms and be able to put them into production to make your machine learning applications more innovative.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)

Clustering Fundamentals

In this chapter, we're going to introduce the basic concepts of clustering and the structure of some quite common algorithms that can solve many problems efficiently. However, their assumptions are sometimes too restrictive; in particular, those concerning the convexity of the clusters can lead to some limitations in their adoption. After reading this chapter, the reader should be aware of the contexts where each strategy can yield accurate results and how to measure the performances and make the right choice regarding the number of clusters.

In particular, we are going to discuss the following:

  • The general concept of clustering
  • The k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) algorithm
  • Gaussian mixture
  • The K-means algorithm
  • Common methods for selecting the optimal number of clusters (inertia, silhouette plots, Calinski-Harabasz index, and cluster instability)
  • Evaluation...