Supervised learning (SL) is a paradigm in machine learning where input objects and a desired output value train a model. The training data is processed, building a function that maps new data on expected output values. An optimal scenario will allow for the algorithm to correctly determine output values for unseen instances. This requires the learning algorithm to generalize from the training data to unseen situations in a "reasonable" way. This statistical quality of an algorithm is measured through the so-called generalization error.
In machine learning, support vector machines are supervised max-margin models with associated learning algorithms that analyze data for classification and regression analysis. Developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories by Vladimir Vapnik with colleagues SVMs are one of the most studied models, being based on statistical learning frameworks of VC theory proposed by Vapnik and Chervonenkis (1974).
In statistics, naive Bayes classifiers are a family of linear "probabilistic classifiers" which assumes that the features are conditionally independent, given the target class. The strength (naivety) of this assumption is what gives the classifier its name. These classifiers are among the simplest Bayesian network models.
In the field of machine learning, the goal of statistical classification is to use an object's characteristics to identify which class it belongs to. A linear classifier achieves this by making a classification decision based on the value of a linear combination of the characteristics. An object's characteristics are also known as feature values and are typically presented to the machine in a vector called a feature vector. Such classifiers work well for practical problems such as document classification, and more generally for problems with many variables (features), reaching accuracy levels comparable to non-linear classifiers while taking less time to train and use. 5–12–23
Decision tree learning is a supervised learning approach used in statistics, data mining and machine learning. In this formalism, a classification or regression decision tree is used as a predictive model to draw conclusions about a set of observations.
In the field of machine learning and specifically the problem of statistical classification, a confusion matrix, also known as error matrix, is a specific table layout that allows visualization of the performance of an algorithm, typically a supervised learning one; in unsupervised learning it is usually called a matching matrix.
A receiver operating characteristic curve, or ROC curve, is a graphical plot that illustrates the performance of a binary classifier model at varying threshold values.
Empirical risk minimization is a principle in statistical learning theory which defines a family of learning algorithms based on evaluating performance over a known and fixed dataset. The core idea is based on an application of the law of large numbers; more specifically, we cannot know exactly how well a predictive algorithm will work in practice because we do not know the true distribution of the data, but we can instead estimate and optimize the performance of the algorithm on a known set of training data. The performance over the known set of training data is referred to as the "empirical risk".
Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), normal discriminant analysis (NDA), or discriminant function analysis is a generalization of Fisher's linear discriminant, a method used in statistics and other fields, to find a linear combination of features that characterizes or separates two or more classes of objects or events. The resulting combination may be used as a linear classifier, or, more commonly, for dimensionality reduction before later classification.
In decision theory, a scoring rule provides a summary measure for the evaluation of probabilistic predictions or forecasts. It is applicable to tasks in which predictions assign probabilities to events, i.e. one issues a probability distribution as prediction. This includes probabilistic classification of a set of mutually exclusive outcomes or classes.
In medicine and statistics, sensitivity and specificity mathematically describe the accuracy of a test that reports the presence or absence of a medical condition. If individuals who have the condition are considered "positive" and those who do not are considered "negative", then sensitivity is a measure of how well a test can identify true positives and specificity is a measure of how well a test can identify true negatives:
Discriminative models, also referred to as conditional models, are a class of models frequently used for classification. They are typically used to assign labels, such as pass/fail, win/lose, alive/dead or healthy/sick, to existing datapoints.
In pattern recognition, information retrieval, object detection and classification, precision and recall are performance metrics that apply to data retrieved from a collection, corpus or sample space.
Demand forecasting is the prediction of the quantity of goods and services that will be demanded by consumers at a future point in time. More specifically, the methods of demand forecasting entail using predictive analytics to estimate customer demand in consideration of key economic conditions. This is an important tool in optimizing business profitability through efficient supply chain management. Demand forecasting methods are divided into two major categories, qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods are based on expert opinion and information gathered from the field. This method is mostly used in situations when there is minimal data available for analysis such as when a business or product has recently been introduced to the market. Quantitative methods, however, use available data, and analytical tools in order to produce predictions. Demand forecasting may be used in resource allocation, inventory management, assessing future capacity requirements, or making decisions on whether to enter a new market.
Within statistics, oversampling and undersampling in data analysis are techniques used to adjust the class distribution of a data set. These terms are used both in statistical sampling, survey design methodology and in machine learning.
In statistics, the phi coefficient is a measure of association for two binary variables.
The evaluation of binary classifiers compares two methods of assigning a binary attribute, one of which is usually a standard method and the other is being investigated. There are many metrics that can be used to measure the performance of a classifier or predictor; different fields have different preferences for specific metrics due to different goals. For example, in medicine sensitivity and specificity are often used, while in computer science precision and recall are preferred. An important distinction is between metrics that are independent on the prevalence, and metrics that depend on the prevalence – both types are useful, but they have very different properties.
Algorithm selection is a meta-algorithmic technique to choose an algorithm from a portfolio on an instance-by-instance basis. It is motivated by the observation that on many practical problems, different algorithms have different performance characteristics. That is, while one algorithm performs well in some scenarios, it performs poorly in others and vice versa for another algorithm. If we can identify when to use which algorithm, we can optimize for each scenario and improve overall performance. This is what algorithm selection aims to do. The only prerequisite for applying algorithm selection techniques is that there exists a set of complementary algorithms.
Fairness in machine learning refers to the various attempts at correcting algorithmic bias in automated decision processes based on machine learning models. Decisions made by computers after a machine-learning process may be considered unfair if they were based on variables considered sensitive. For example gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability. As it is the case with many ethical concepts, definitions of fairness and bias are always controversial. In general, fairness and bias are considered relevant when the decision process impacts people's lives. In machine learning, the problem of algorithmic bias is well known and well studied. Outcomes may be skewed by a range of factors and thus might be considered unfair with respect to certain groups or individuals. An example would be the way social media sites deliver personalized news to consumers.
In network theory, link prediction is the problem of predicting the existence of a link between two entities in a network. Examples of link prediction include predicting friendship links among users in a social network, predicting co-authorship links in a citation network, and predicting interactions between genes and proteins in a biological network. Link prediction can also have a temporal aspect, where, given a snapshot of the set of links at time , the goal is to predict the links at time . Link prediction is widely applicable. In e-commerce, link prediction is often a subtask for recommending items to users. In the curation of citation databases, it can be used for record deduplication. In bioinformatics, it has been used to predict protein-protein interactions (PPI). It is also used to identify hidden groups of terrorists and criminals in security related applications.
