Optimization for Machine Learning Crash Course. Find function optima with Python in 7 days. All machine learning models involve optimization. As a practitioner, we optimize for the most suitable hyperparameters or the subset of features. Decision tree algorithm optimize for the split. Neural network optimize for the weight. Most likely, we use computational algorithms to […]
Python has become a de facto lingua franca for machine learning. It is not a difficult language to learn, but if you are not particularly familiar with the language, there are some tips that can help you learn faster or better. In this post, you will discover what the right way to learn a programming […]
One crucial step in machine learning is the choice of model. A suitable model with suitable hyperparameter is the key to a good prediction result. When we are faced with a choice between models, how should the decision be made? This is why we have cross validation. In scikit-learn, there is a family of functions […]
Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the bio-inspired algorithms and it is a simple one to search for an optimal solution in the solution space. It is different from other optimization algorithms in such a way that only the objective function is needed and it is not dependent on the gradient or any differential […]
In a previous post, we introduced the method of Lagrange multipliers to find local minima or local maxima of a function with equality constraints. The same method can be applied to those with inequality constraints as well. In this tutorial, you will discover the method of Lagrange multipliers applied to find the local minimum or […]
Whether you implement a neural network yourself or you use a built in library for neural network learning, it is of paramount importance to understand the significance of a sigmoid function. The sigmoid function is the key to understanding how a neural network learns complex problems. This function also served as a basis for discovering […]
An artificial neural network is a computational model that approximates a mapping between inputs and outputs. It is inspired by the structure of the human brain, in that it is similarly composed of a network of interconnected neurons that propagate information upon receiving sets of stimuli from neighbouring neurons. Training a neural network involves a […]
A Gentle Introduction to Taylor Series Taylor series expansion is an awesome concept, not only the world of mathematics, but also in optimization theory, function approximation and machine learning. It is widely applied in numerical computations when estimates of a function’s values at different points are required. In this tutorial, you will discover Taylor series […]
When it comes to machine learning tasks such as classification or regression, approximation techniques play a key role in learning from the data. Many machine learning methods approximate a function or a mapping between the inputs and outputs via a learning algorithm. In this tutorial, you will discover what is approximation and its importance in […]
The chain rule is an important derivative rule that allows us to work with composite functions. It is essential in understanding the workings of the backpropagation algorithm, which applies the chain rule extensively in order to calculate the error gradient of the loss function with respect to each weight of a neural network. We will […]
