Book Image

Advanced Machine Learning with R

By : Cory Lesmeister, Dr. Sunil Kumar Chinnamgari
Book Image

Advanced Machine Learning with R

By: Cory Lesmeister, Dr. Sunil Kumar Chinnamgari

Overview of this book

R is one of the most popular languages when it comes to exploring the mathematical side of machine learning and easily performing computational statistics. This Learning Path shows you how to leverage the R ecosystem to build efficient machine learning applications that carry out intelligent tasks within your organization. You’ll work through realistic projects such as building powerful machine learning models with ensembles to predict employee attrition. Next, you’ll explore different clustering techniques to segment customers using wholesale data and even apply TensorFlow and Keras-R for performing advanced computations. Each chapter will help you implement advanced machine learning algorithms using real-world examples. You’ll also be introduced to reinforcement learning along with its use cases and models. Finally, this Learning Path will provide you with a glimpse into how some of these black box models can be diagnosed and understood. By the end of this Learning Path, you’ll be equipped with the skills you need to deploy machine learning techniques in your own projects.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Identifying the customer segments in the wholesale customer data using DIANA


Hierarchical clustering algorithms are a good choice when we don't necessarily have circular (or hyperspherical) clusters in the data, and we essentially don't know the number of clusters in advance. With hierarchical clustering algorithm, unlike the flat or partitioning algorithms, there is no requirement to decide and pass the number of clusters to be formed prior to applying the algorithm on the dataset.

Hierarchical clustering results in a dendogram (tree diagram) that can be visually verified to easily determine the number of clusters. Visual verification enables us to perform cuts in the dendrogram at suitable places.

The results produced by this type of clustering algorithm are reproducible as the algorithm is not sensitive to the choice of the distance metric. In other words, irrespective of the distance metric chosen, we will get the same results. This type of clustering is also suitable for datasets of a...