Book Image

Hands-On Unsupervised Learning with Python

By : Giuseppe Bonaccorso
Book Image

Hands-On Unsupervised Learning with Python

By: Giuseppe Bonaccorso

Overview of this book

Unsupervised learning is about making use of raw, untagged data and applying learning algorithms to it to help a machine predict its outcome. With this book, you will explore the concept of unsupervised learning to cluster large sets of data and analyze them repeatedly until the desired outcome is found using Python. This book starts with the key differences between supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning. You will be introduced to the best-used libraries and frameworks from the Python ecosystem and address unsupervised learning in both the machine learning and deep learning domains. You will explore various algorithms, techniques that are used to implement unsupervised learning in real-world use cases. You will learn a variety of unsupervised learning approaches, including randomized optimization, clustering, feature selection and transformation, and information theory. You will get hands-on experience with how neural networks can be employed in unsupervised scenarios. You will also explore the steps involved in building and training a GAN in order to process images. By the end of this book, you will have learned the art of unsupervised learning for different real-world challenges.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

One of the most common ways to reduce the dimensionality of a dataset is based on the analysis of the sample covariance matrix. In general, we know that the information content of a random variable is proportional to its variance. For example, given a multivariate Gaussian, the entropy, which is the mathematical expression that we employ to measure the information, is as follows:

In the previous formula, Σ is the covariance matrix. If we assume (without loss of generality) that Σ is diagonal, it's easy to understand that the entropy is larger (proportionally) than the variance of each single component, σi2. This is not surprising, because a random variable with a low variance is concentrated around the mean, and the probability of surprises is low. On the other hand, when σ2 becomes larger and larger, the potential...