1 Introduction to machine learning
“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns– Chuck Palahniuk”
We love patterns. Be it our business or our life, we find patterns and (generally) tend to stick to them. We have our preferences of groceries we buy, telecom operators and calling packs we use, news articles we follow, movie genre and audio tracks we like – these all are examples of patterns of ours preferences. We love patterns, and more then patterns we love finding them, arranging them and may be getting used to them!
Then there is a cliché going on - “Data is the new electricity”. Data is indeed precious, nobody can deny that. But data in its purest form will be of no use. We have to clean the data, analyse and visualise it and then we can develop insights from it. Data sciences, machine learning and artificial intelligence are helping us in uncovering these patterns – so that we can take more insightful and balanced decisions in our activities and business.
In this book, we are going to solve some of such mysteries. We will be studying a branch of machine learning referred to as Unsupervised Learning. Unsupervised learning solutions, are one of the most influential approaches which are changing face of the industry. They are utilized in banking and finance, retail, insurance, manufacturing, aviation, medical sciences, telecom and almost every sector.