Overview of the Anomaly Detector service
Anomaly detection is notably one of the most difficult activities presented to any data scientist or AI developer. Many will opt to not work on anomaly detection projects at all due to their inconsistent nature. This is the best way we can think to preface this chapter; it is daunting to get it right, and seemingly even when we get it right, it changes very quickly, as with all technology. As we navigate through the features of this Cognitive Service, try to keep this sentiment in the back of your head to ensure we are approaching the subject in a sobering fashion.
Merriam-Webster defines anomaly as something different, abnormal, peculiar, or not easily classified: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anomaly.
So, when setting out to build the Anomaly Detector Cognitive Service, Microsoft determined its customers could leverage an API where any stream or collection of streams of data might occasionally contain anomalous behavior...