When modeling, it is important to clean the data sample to ensure that the observations best represent the problem. Sometimes a dataset can contain extreme values that are outside the range of what is expected and unlike the other data. These are called outliers and often machine learning modeling and model skill in general can […]
Randomness is a big part of machine learning. Randomness is used as a tool or a feature in preparing data and in learning algorithms that map input data to output data in order to make predictions. In order to understand the need for statistical methods in machine learning, you must understand the source of randomness […]
After you develop a machine learning model for your predictive modeling problem, how do you know if the performance of the model is any good? This is a common question I am asked by beginners. As a beginner, you often seek an answer to this question, e.g. you want someone to tell you whether an […]
What To Do If Model Test Results Are Worse than Training. The procedure when evaluating machine learning models is to fit and evaluate them on training data, then verify that the model has good skill on a held-back test dataset. Often, you will get a very promising performance when evaluating the model on the training […]
The data that you use, and how you use it, will likely define the success of your predictive modeling problem. Data and the framing of your problem may be the point of biggest leverage on your project. Choosing the wrong data or the wrong framing for your problem may lead to a model with poor […]
Do you have questions like: What data is best for my problem? What algorithm is best for my data? How do I best configure my algorithm? Why can’t a machine learning expert just give you a straight answer to your question? In this post, I want to help you see why no one can ever […]
The development environment that you use for machine learning may be just as important as the machine learning methods that you use to solve your predictive modeling problem. A few times a week, I get a question such as: What is your development environment for machine learning? In this post, you will discover the development […]
How to predict classification or regression outcomes with scikit-learn models in Python. Once you choose and fit a final machine learning model in scikit-learn, you can use it to make predictions on new data instances. There is some confusion amongst beginners about how exactly to do this. I often see questions such as: How do […]
So, you’re working on a machine learning problem. I want to really nail down where you’re at right now. Let me make some guesses… 1) You Have a Problem So you have a problem that you need to solve. Maybe it’s your problem, an idea you have, a question, or something you want to address. […]
Machine learning is a large and interdisciplinary field of study. You can achieve impressive results with machine learning and find solutions to very challenging problems. But this is only a small corner of the broader field of machine learning often called predictive modeling or predictive analytics. In this post, you will discover how to change […]
