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Machine Learning with R

You're reading from   Machine Learning with R Expert techniques for predictive modeling to solve all your data analysis problems

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jul 2015
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781784393908
Length 452 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Brett Lantz Brett Lantz
Author Profile Icon Brett Lantz
Brett Lantz
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Toc

Table of Contents (14) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introducing Machine Learning 2. Managing and Understanding Data FREE CHAPTER 3. Lazy Learning – Classification Using Nearest Neighbors 4. Probabilistic Learning – Classification Using Naive Bayes 5. Divide and Conquer – Classification Using Decision Trees and Rules 6. Forecasting Numeric Data – Regression Methods 7. Black Box Methods – Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines 8. Finding Patterns – Market Basket Analysis Using Association Rules 9. Finding Groups of Data – Clustering with k-means 10. Evaluating Model Performance 11. Improving Model Performance 12. Specialized Machine Learning Topics Index

Summary

Our findings support the popular adage that "birds of a feather flock together." By using machine learning methods to cluster teenagers with others who have similar interests, we were able to develop a typology of teen identities that was predictive of personal characteristics, such as gender and the number of friends. These same methods can be applied to other contexts with similar results.

This chapter covered only the fundamentals of clustering. As a very mature machine learning method, there are many variants of the k-means algorithm as well as many other clustering algorithms that bring unique biases and heuristics to the task. Based on the foundation in this chapter, you will be able to understand and apply other clustering methods to new problems.

In the next chapter, we will begin to look at methods for measuring the success of a learning algorithm, which are applicable across many machine learning tasks. While our process has always devoted some effort to evaluating...

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