5.3. Intro to Machine Learning

Within the general process of modeling, this chapter focuses primarily on what we do after we define the problem, think about the question and data, and get the data.

  1. Start with an interesting question or problem

  2. What type of question are you asking?

  3. Think about data: […]

After step 3: Actually develop your ML model. That’s this chapter.

The workflow for the actual development of an ML model is:

flowchart

This chapter will discuss this modeling process backwards, under a framework mostly focused on “supervised” prediction problems.

Working backwards will help keep our focus on why we are doing certain steps and the big picture, rather than getting mired in the weeds, which can lead to poor or disastrous analysis.

After several subchapters discussing the issues, we will get into coding.