Book Image

Synthetic Data for Machine Learning

By : Abdulrahman Kerim
Book Image

Synthetic Data for Machine Learning

By: Abdulrahman Kerim

Overview of this book

The machine learning (ML) revolution has made our world unimaginable without its products and services. However, training ML models requires vast datasets, which entails a process plagued by high costs, errors, and privacy concerns associated with collecting and annotating real data. Synthetic data emerges as a promising solution to all these challenges. This book is designed to bridge theory and practice of using synthetic data, offering invaluable support for your ML journey. Synthetic Data for Machine Learning empowers you to tackle real data issues, enhance your ML models' performance, and gain a deep understanding of synthetic data generation. You’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, gaining practical knowledge with hands-on examples of modern methods, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and diffusion models. Additionally, you’ll uncover the secrets and best practices to harness the full potential of synthetic data. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered synthetic data and positioned yourself as a market leader, ready for more advanced, cost-effective, and higher-quality data sources, setting you ahead of your peers in the next generation of ML.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Part 1:Real Data Issues, Limitations, and Challenges
5
Part 2:An Overview of Synthetic Data for Machine Learning
8
Part 3:Synthetic Data Generation Approaches
13
Part 4:Case Studies and Best Practices
18
Part 5:Current Challenges and Future Perspectives

Training a GAN

In this section, we will learn how to train a typical GAN. Then, we will discuss the main challenges and difficulties.

A GAN is trained using unsupervised learning techniques where both submodels are trained simultaneously using a process called adversarial training. A typical GAN consists of two neural networks (usually convolutional neural networks): the generator and the discriminator. The generator takes in a random noise vector as input and generates a synthetic (fake) sample. The goal of the generator is to produce synthetic data that is realistic and indistinguishable from real data. The discriminator, on the other hand, is trained to distinguish between real and fake samples. It receives a sample and predicts its data source domain: real or fake. If the discriminator correctly identifies a real data sample, no error is backpropagated. However, if the discriminator fails to identify a synthetic sample, it is penalized, and the generator is rewarded. The generator...