Introducing Machine Learning

Chapter 9. Math Foundations of Machine Learning

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

—Ernest Rutherford(Winner of Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908 and precursor of nuclear physics)

Too many people, regardless of a high or technical level of education, find it hard to figure out how machine learning works. Too often the algorithm is envisioned as a deus ex machina (a Latin phrase meaning “god from the machine”) that suddenly appears on stage to abruptly resolve a seemingly unsolvable situation in the plot. In Greek tragedy, a mechanical device was used to bring actors on scene to let them play the role of some divinity, which is where the name “god from the machine” originated.

To many, machine learning ...