APC Australia - September 2019

howto»machine learning masterclass

W

e’vesaidafewtimesthat

machine-learningisthe

intersectionof

mathematics,statistics

andcomputerscience.However,it’s

fairtosaythatforsome,thesethree

areasaresufficientkryptoniteto

staywellawayfromthewholething

• andthat’sapitybecauseMLcanbe
  successfullyappliedtomany
  differentfields.Butifyou’vedecided
  codingisn’tyourthing,itdoesn’thave
  tomeangivingmachinelearninga
  wideberth.Thismonth,welookata
  programming-freewaytoimplement
  machinelearningtechniquesand
  howitcanbeused in email spam
  detection.

WAIKATOENVIRONMENTFOR

KNOWLEDGEANALYSIS

Whilemuchofmachinelearningdoes

relyonhavinggoodcodingskills

(particularlyPythonorR),thereisan

alternativedevelopedbythe

UniversityofWaikatoinNewZealand

called‘WaikatoEnvironmentfor

KnowledgeAnalysis’or‘Weka’for

short.It’sagraphicaluserinterface

(GUI)-basedappthatrunsonWindows,

macOS and Linux and allows you to

Machine learning – with

zero programming

Wantto trymachine-learning but programmingjust isn’t your thing? Easy.

D a r r e n Ya t e s explains how, zero coding required.

executemachine-learningalgorithms

ondatawithoutcoding.However,

beforewejumpin,it’llhelptoexplain

howandwhen you use machine-

learning.

AI,MLORDM?

Mostpeoplehaveahandleon‘artificial

intelligence’;ifnot,they’vemostlikely

atleastheardoftheconcept.Mention

‘machine learning’ and the number of

blankstaresbeginstorise.Dropthe

term‘datamining’anditskyrockets.

Unfortunately,‘AI’hasbecomethe

media-fuelledumbrellatermfor

everythinginvolvingcomputational

techniques,wheninfact,theterms

‘machinelearning’and‘datamining’

arearguablymoreaccuratein

describinghowandwheremuchofthis

stuffisapplied.

Just briefly, machine learning is the

TheAttribute-Relation

FileFormatisaglorified

CSV text file.

BabylonHealth’sGPAtHand

appoffersappointments

with ‘vir tual GPs’.