This 62nd episode of Learning Machines 101 (www.learningmachines101.com)  discusses how to design reinforcement learning machines using your knowledge of how to build supervised learning machines! Specifically, we focus on Value Function Reinforcement Learning Machines which estimate the unobservable total penalty associated with an episode when only the beginning of the episode is observable. This estimated Value Function can then be used by the learning machine to select a particular action...

This is the third of a short subsequence of podcasts providing a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode reviews and discusses topics associated with the Introduction to Reinforcement Learning with Function Approximation Tutorial presented by Professor Richard Sutton on the first day of the conference. This episode is a RERUN of...

This 60th episode of Learning Machines 101 discusses how one can use novelty detection or anomaly detection machine learning algorithms to monitor the performance of other machine learning algorithms deployed in real world environments. The episode is based upon a review of a talk by Chief Data Scientist Ira Cohen of Anodot presented at the 2016 Berlin Buzzwords Data Science Conference. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com to hear the podcast or read a transcription of the podcast!

I discuss the concept of a “neural network” by providing some examples of recent successes in neural network machine learning algorithms and providing a historical perspective on the evolution of the neural network concept from its biological origins. For more details visit us at: www.learningmachines101.com  

In this 58th episode of Learning Machines 101, I’ll be discussing an important new scientific breakthrough published just last week for the first time in the journal Econometrics  in the special issue on model misspecification titled “Generalized Information Matrix Tests for Detecting Model Misspecification”. The article provides a unified theoretical framework for the development of a wide range of methods for determining if a learning machine is capable of learning its statistical...

In this 57th episode, we explain how to use unsupervised machine learning algorithms to catch internet criminals who try to steal your money electronically!  Check it out at: www.learningmachines101.com  

In this NEW episode we discuss Latent Semantic Indexing type machine learning algorithms which have a PROBABILISTIC  interpretation. We explain why such a probabilistic interpretation is important and discuss how such algorithms can be used in the design of document retrieval systems, search engines, and recommender systems. Check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us on twitter at: @lm101talk  

In this rerun of Episode 10, we discuss fundamental principles of learning in statistical environments including the design of learning machines that can use prior knowledge to facilitate and guide the learning of statistical regularities. In particular, the episode introduces fundamental machine learning concepts such as: probability models, model misspecification, maximum likelihood estimation, and MAP estimation. Check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com  

Welcome to the 54th Episode of Learning Machines 101 titled "How to Build a Search Engine, Automatically Grade Essays, and Identify Synonyms using Latent Semantic Analysis" (rerun of Episode 40). The principles in this episode are also applicable to the problem of "Market Basket Analysis"  and the design of Recommender Systems. Check it out at: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us on twitter: @lm101talk

In this 53rd episode of Learning Machines 101, we introduce the concept of a Swarm Intelligence with respect to Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms. The essential idea of “Swarm Intelligence” is that you have a group of individual entities which behave in a coordinated manner yet there is no master control center providing directions to all of the individuals in the group. The global group behavior is an “emergent property” of local interactions among individuals in the group! We will...

Today, we discuss a simple yet powerful idea which began popular in the machine learning literature in the 1990s which is called “The Kernel Trick”. The basic idea of the “Kernel Trick” is that you specify similarity relationships among input patterns rather than a recoding transformation to solve a nonlinear problem with a linear learning machine. It's a great magic trick...check it out at: www.learningmachines101.com where you can obtain transcripts of this episode and download free...

This particular podcast is a RERUN of Episode 20 and describes step by step how to download free software which can be used to make predictions using a feedforward artificial neural network whose hidden units are radial basis functions. This is essentially a nonlinear regression modeling problem. We show the performance of this nonlinear learning machine is substantially better on test data set than the linear learning machine software presented in Episode 13. Basically performance for the...

In this episode we will explain how to download and use free machine learning software from the website: www.learningmachines101.com. This podcast is concerned with the very practical issues associated with downloading and installing machine learning software on your computer. If you follow these instructions, by the end of this episode you will have installed one of the simplest (yet most widely used) machine learning algorithms on your computer. You can then use the software to make...

In this episode we continue the discussion of learning when the actions of the learning machine can alter the characteristics of the learning machine’s statistical environment. We describe how to download free lunar lander software so you can experiment with an autopilot for a lunar lander module that learns from its experiences and describe the results of some simulation studies. To learn more, visit: www.learningmachines101.com to download the free lunar lander software which illustrates...

In this episode we consider the problem of learning when the actions of the learning machine can alter the characteristics of the learning machine’s statistical environment. We illustrate the solution to this problem by designing an autopilot for a lunar lander module that learns from its experiences. For more information, check out: www.learningmachines101.com and visit us a twitter: @lm101talk   #machinelearning  #statistics #artificialintelligence

We explain how to estimate the parameters of such machines to classify a pattern vector as a member of one of two categories as well as identify special pattern vectors called “support vectors” which are important for characterizing the Support Vector Machine decision boundary. The relationship of Support Vector Machine parameter estimation and logistic regression parameter estimation is also discussed. For more information..check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com also check us out on...

In this episode, we briefly review Item Response Theory and Bayesian Network Theory methods for the assessment and optimization of student learning and then describe a poster presented on the first day of the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in December 2015 in Montreal which describes a Recurrent Neural Network approach for the assessment and optimization of student learning called “Deep Knowledge Tracing”. For more details check out: www.learningmachines101.com and follow...

In this episode we discuss just one out of the 102 different posters which was presented on the first night of the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This presentation describes a system which can answer simple questions about images. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com for additional details!!

This is the third of a short subsequence of podcasts providing a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode reviews and discusses topics associated with the Introduction to Reinforcement Learning with Function Approximation Tutorial presented by Professor Richard Sutton on the first day of the conference. Check...

Welcome to the 43rd Episode of Learning Machines 101! We are currently presenting a subsequence of episodes covering the events of the recent Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. However, this week will digress with a rerun of Episode 22 which nicely complements our previous discussion of the Monte Carlo Markov Chain Algorithm Tutorial. Specifically, today we discuss the problem of approaches for learning or equivalently parameter estimation in Monte Carlo Markov Chain...

This is the second of a short subsequence of podcasts providing a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode reviews and discusses topics associated with the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) Inference Methods Tutorial held on the first day of the conference. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com   to listen or download this podcast...

This is the first of a short subsequence of podcasts which provides a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode introduces the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference and reviews the content of the Morning Deep Learning Tutorial which took place on the first day of the conference. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com for...

In this episode we introduce a very powerful approach for computing semantic similarity between documents.  Here, the terminology “document” could refer to a web-page, a word document, a paragraph of text, an essay, a sentence, or even just a single word.  Two semantically similar documents, therefore, will discuss many of the same topics while two semantically different documents will not have many topics in common.  Machine learning methods are described which can take as input large...

In this episode we discuss how to solve constraint satisfaction inference problems where knowledge is represented as a large unordered collection of complicated probabilistic constraints among a collection of variables. The goal of the inference process is to infer the most probable values of the unobservable variables given the observable variables. Concepts of Markov Random Fields and Monte Carlo Markov Chain methods are discussed. For additional details and technical notes, please visit...

In this episode, we examine the problem of developing an advanced artificially intelligent technology which is capable of tracking knowledge growth in students in real-time, representing the knowledge state of a student a skill profile, and automatically defining the concept of a skill without human intervention! The approach can be viewed as a sophisticated state-of-the-art extension of the Item Response Theory approach to Computerized Adaptive Testing Educational Technology described in...