Learning Bayesian Models with R

An overview of common machine learning tasks

This section is a prequel to the following chapters, where we will discuss different machine learning techniques in detail. At a high level, there are only a handful of tasks that machine learning tries to address. However, for each of such tasks, there are several approaches and algorithms in place.

The typical tasks in any machine learning are one of the following:

• Classification
• Regression
• Clustering
• Association rules
• Forecasting
• Dimensional reduction
• Density estimation

In classification, the objective is to assign a new data point to one of the predetermined classes. Typically, this is either a supervised or semi-supervised learning problem. The well-known machine learning algorithms used for classification ...