What Is Machine Learning?
If you have ever written a program, you will be familiar with the diagram shown in Figure 1.1. You write a program, feed some data into it, and get your output. For example, you might write a program to perform some accounting tasks for your business. In this case, the data collected would include your sales records, your inventory lists, and so on. The program would then take in the data and calculate your profits or loss based on your sales records. You may also perhaps churn out some nice and fanciful charts showing your sales performance. In this case, the output is the profit/loss statement, as well as other charts.
Figure 1.1: In traditional programming, the data and the program produce the output
For many years, traditional desktop and web programming have dominated the landscape, and many algorithms and methodologies have evolved to make programs run more efficiently. In more recent years, however, machine learning has taken over the programming world...
