In this NEW episode we discuss Latent Semantic Indexing type machine learning algorithms which have a PROBABILISTIC interpretation. We explain why such a probabilistic interpretation is important and discuss how such algorithms can be used in the design of document retrieval systems, search engines, and recommender systems. Check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us on twitter at: @lm101talk
Sep 20, 2016•28 min•Season 1Ep. 56
In this rerun of Episode 10, we discuss fundamental principles of learning in statistical environments including the design of learning machines that can use prior knowledge to facilitate and guide the learning of statistical regularities. In particular, the episode introduces fundamental machine learning concepts such as: probability models, model misspecification, maximum likelihood estimation, and MAP estimation. Check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com...
Aug 16, 2016•35 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Welcome to the 54th Episode of Learning Machines 101 titled "How to Build a Search Engine, Automatically Grade Essays, and Identify Synonyms using Latent Semantic Analysis" (rerun of Episode 40). The principles in this episode are also applicable to the problem of "Market Basket Analysis" and the design of Recommender Systems. Check it out at: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us on twitter: @lm101talk
Jul 25, 2016•30 min•Season 1Ep. 54
In this 53rd episode of Learning Machines 101, we introduce the concept of a Swarm Intelligence with respect to Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms. The essential idea of “Swarm Intelligence” is that you have a group of individual entities which behave in a coordinated manner yet there is no master control center providing directions to all of the individuals in the group. The global group behavior is an “emergent property” of local interactions among individuals in the group! We will analyze...
Jul 11, 2016•27 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Today, we discuss a simple yet powerful idea which began popular in the machine learning literature in the 1990s which is called “The Kernel Trick”. The basic idea of the “Kernel Trick” is that you specify similarity relationships among input patterns rather than a recoding transformation to solve a nonlinear problem with a linear learning machine. It's a great magic trick...check it out at: www.learningmachines101.com where you can obtain transcripts of this episode and download free machine le...
Jun 13, 2016•29 min•Season 1Ep. 52
This particular podcast is a RERUN of Episode 20 and describes step by step how to download free software which can be used to make predictions using a feedforward artificial neural network whose hidden units are radial basis functions. This is essentially a nonlinear regression modeling problem. We show the performance of this nonlinear learning machine is substantially better on test data set than the linear learning machine software presented in Episode 13. Basically performance for the linea...
May 24, 2016•29 min•Season 1Ep. 51
In this episode we will explain how to download and use free machine learning software from the website: www.learningmachines101.com . This podcast is concerned with the very practical issues associated with downloading and installing machine learning software on your computer. If you follow these instructions, by the end of this episode you will have installed one of the simplest (yet most widely used) machine learning algorithms on your computer. You can then use the software to make virtually...
May 04, 2016•31 min•Season 1Ep. 50
In this episode we continue the discussion of learning when the actions of the learning machine can alter the characteristics of the learning machine’s statistical environment. We describe how to download free lunar lander software so you can experiment with an autopilot for a lunar lander module that learns from its experiences and describe the results of some simulation studies. To learn more, visit: www.learningmachines101.com to download the free lunar lander software which illustrates princ...
Apr 22, 2016•35 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this episode we consider the problem of learning when the actions of the learning machine can alter the characteristics of the learning machine’s statistical environment. We illustrate the solution to this problem by designing an autopilot for a lunar lander module that learns from its experiences. For more information, check out: www.learningmachines101.com and visit us a twitter: @lm101talk #machinelearning #statistics #artificialintelligence...
Mar 29, 2016•31 min•Season 1Ep. 48
We explain how to estimate the parameters of such machines to classify a pattern vector as a member of one of two categories as well as identify special pattern vectors called “support vectors” which are important for characterizing the Support Vector Machine decision boundary. The relationship of Support Vector Machine parameter estimation and logistic regression parameter estimation is also discussed. For more information..check us out at: www.learningmachines101.com also check us out on twitt...
Mar 14, 2016•35 min•Season 1Ep. 47
In this episode, we briefly review Item Response Theory and Bayesian Network Theory methods for the assessment and optimization of student learning and then describe a poster presented on the first day of the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in December 2015 in Montreal which describes a Recurrent Neural Network approach for the assessment and optimization of student learning called “Deep Knowledge Tracing”. For more details check out: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us on...
Feb 23, 2016•23 min•Season 1Ep. 46
In this episode we discuss just one out of the 102 different posters which was presented on the first night of the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This presentation describes a system which can answer simple questions about images. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com f or additional details!!
Feb 08, 2016•22 min•Season 1Ep. 45
This is the third of a short subsequence of podcasts providing a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode reviews and discusses topics associated with the Introduction to Reinforcement Learning with Function Approximation Tutorial presented by Professor Richard Sutton on the first day of the conference. Check out: www.learningmachines1...
Jan 26, 2016•32 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Welcome to the 43rd Episode of Learning Machines 101! We are currently presenting a subsequence of episodes covering the events of the recent Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. However, this week will digress with a rerun of Episode 22 which nicely complements our previous discussion of the Monte Carlo Markov Chain Algorithm Tutorial. Specifically, today we discuss the problem of approaches for learning or equivalently parameter estimation in Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithms. T...
Jan 12, 2016•28 min•Season 1Ep. 43
This is the second of a short subsequence of podcasts providing a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode reviews and discusses topics associated with the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) Inference Methods Tutorial held on the first day of the conference. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com to listen or download this podcast episode...
Dec 29, 2015•26 min•Season 1Ep. 42
This is the first of a short subsequence of podcasts which provides a summary of events associated with Dr. Golden’s recent visit to the 2015 Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. This is one of the top conferences in the field of Machine Learning. This episode introduces the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference and reviews the content of the Morning Deep Learning Tutorial which took place on the first day of the conference. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com f or add...
Dec 16, 2015•30 min•Season 1Ep. 41
In this episode we introduce a very powerful approach for computing semantic similarity between documents. Here, the terminology “document” could refer to a web-page, a word document, a paragraph of text, an essay, a sentence, or even just a single word. Two semantically similar documents, therefore, will discuss many of the same topics while two semantically different documents will not have many topics in common. Machine learning methods are described which can take as input large collections ...
Nov 24, 2015•28 min•Season 1Ep. 40
In this episode we discuss how to solve constraint satisfaction inference problems where knowledge is represented as a large unordered collection of complicated probabilistic constraints among a collection of variables. The goal of the inference process is to infer the most probable values of the unobservable variables given the observable variables. Concepts of Markov Random Fields and Monte Carlo Markov Chain methods are discussed. For additional details and technical notes, please visit the w...
Nov 09, 2015•35 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In this episode, we examine the problem of developing an advanced artificially intelligent technology which is capable of tracking knowledge growth in students in real-time, representing the knowledge state of a student a skill profile, and automatically defining the concept of a skill without human intervention! The approach can be viewed as a sophisticated state-of-the-art extension of the Item Response Theory approach to Computerized Adaptive Testing Educational Technology described in Episod...
Oct 27, 2015•24 min•Season 1Ep. 38
In this episode, we discuss the problem of how to build a smart computerized adaptive testing machine using Item Response Theory (IRT). Suppose that you are teaching a student a particular target set of knowledge. Examples of such situations obviously occur in nursery school, elementary school, junior high school, high school, and college. However, such situations also occur in industry when top professionals in a particular field attend an advanced training seminar. All of these situations woul...
Oct 12, 2015•35 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In this episode, we discuss the problem of predicting the future from not only recent events but also from the distant past using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). A example RNN is described which learns to label images with simple sentences. A learning machine capable of generating even simple descriptions of images such as these could be used to help the blind interpret images, provide assistance to children and adults in language acquisition, support internet search of content in images, and ...
Sep 28, 2015•25 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In this episode, we address the important questions of “What is a neural network?” and “What is a hot dog?” by discussing human brains, neural networks that learn to play Atari video games, and rat brain neural networks. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com for videos of a neural network that learns to play ATARI video games and transcripts of this podcast!!! Also follow us on twitter at: @lm101talk See you soon!!
Sep 15, 2015•29 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Welcome to the 34th podcast in the podcast series Learning Machines 101 titled "How to Use Nonlinear Machine Learning Software to Make Predictions". This particular podcast is a RERUN of Episode 20 and describes step by step how to download free software which can be used to make predictions using a feedforward artificial neural network whose hidden units are radial basis functions. This is essentially a nonlinear regression modeling problem. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com and follow us ...
Aug 25, 2015•29 min•Season 1Ep. 34
In this episode will explain how to download and use free machine learning software which can be downloaded from the website: www.learningmachines101.com . The software can be used to make predictions using your own data sets. Although we will continue to focus on critical theoretical concepts in machine learning in future episodes, it is always useful to actually experience how these concepts work in practice.This is a rerun of Episode 13....
Aug 10, 2015•31 min•Season 1Ep. 33
In this 32nd episode of Learning Machines 101, we introduce the concept of a Support Vector Machine. We explain how to estimate the parameters of such machines to classify a pattern vector as a member of one of two categories as well as identify special pattern vectors called “support vectors” which are important for characterizing the Support Vector Machine decision boundary. The relationship of Support Vector Machine parameter estimation and logistic regression parameter estimation is also dis...
Jul 13, 2015•35 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In this rerun of Episode 16, we introduce the important concept of gradient descent which is the fundamental principle underlying learning mechanisms in a wide range of machine learning algorithms. Check out the transcripts of this episode and related references and software at: www.learningmachines101.com !!!
Jun 21, 2015•32 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Deep learning machine technology has rapidly developed over the past five years due in part to a variety of actors such as: better technology, convolutional net algorithms, rectified linear units, and a relatively new learning strategy called "dropout" in which hidden unit feature detectors are temporarily deleted during the learning process. This article introduces and discusses the concept of "dropout" to support deep learning performance and makes connections of the "dropout" concept to conce...
Jun 08, 2015•32 min•Season 1Ep. 30
This podcast discusses talks, papers, and ideas presented at the recent International Conference on Learning Representations 2015 which was followed by the Artificial Intelligence in Statistics 2015 Conference in San Diego. Specifically, commonly used techniques shared by many successful deep learning algorithms such as: rectilinear units, convolutional filters, and max-pooling are discussed. For more details please visit our website at: www.learningmachines101.com !...
May 25, 2015•36 min•Season 1Ep. 29
This rerun of an earlier episode of Learning Machines 101 discusses the problem of how to evaluate the ability of a learning machine to make generalizations and construct abstractions given the learning machine is provided a finite limited collection of experiences. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com to obtain transcripts of this podcast and download free machine learning software!
May 11, 2015•35 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this episode of Learning Machines 101 we discuss the design of statistical learning machines which can make inferences about rare and unseen events using prior knowledge. Check out: www.learningmachines101.com to obtain transcripts of this podcast and download free machine learning software!
Apr 28, 2015•40 min•Season 1Ep. 27
