Machine Learning with R

Uses and abuses of machine learning

At its core, machine learning is primarily interested in making sense of complex data. This is a broadly applicable mission, and largely application agnostic. As you might expect, machine learning is used widely. For instance, it has been used to:

• Predict the outcomes of elections
• Identify and filter spam messages from e-mail
• Foresee criminal activity
• Automate traffic signals according to road conditions
• Produce financial estimates of storms and natural disasters
• Examine customer churn
• Create auto-piloting planes and auto-driving cars
• Identify individuals with the capacity to donate
• Target advertising to specific types of consumers

For now, don't worry about exactly how the machines learn to perform these tasks; we will ...