1) What is Machine learning?

Machine learning is a branch of computer science which deals with system

programming in order to automatically learn and improve with experience.

For example: Robots are programmed so that they can perform the task
based on data they gather from sensors. It automatically learns programs
from data.

2) What is not Machine Learning?

● Artificial Intelligence
● Rule based inference

3) What are two techniques of Machine Learning?

The two techniques of Machine Learning are

● Genetic Programming
● Inductive Learning

4) Give a popular application of machine learning that you see on a

day to day basis?

The recommendation engine implemented by major ecommerce websites

uses Machine Learning.

5) What is inductive machine learning?

Inductive machine learning involves the process of learning by examples,

where a system, from a set of observed instances, tries to induce a general
rule.

6) List down various approaches for machine learning?

The different approaches in Machine Learning are

● Concept Vs Classification Learning

 ● Symbolic Vs Statistical Learning
● Inductive Vs Analytical Learning

7) What are the three stages to build hypotheses or models in

machine learning?

● Model building
● Model testing
● Applying the model

8) What is algorithm independent machine learning?

Machine learning in which mathematical foundations are independent of

any particular classifier or learning algorithm is referred to as algorithm
independent machine learning?

9) What is a classifier in machine learning?

A classifier in Machine Learning is a system that inputs a vector of discrete

or continuous feature values and outputs a single discrete value, the class.

10) Mention the difference between Data Mining and Machine

learning?

Machine learning relates with the study, design and development of the
algorithms that give computers the capability to learn without being
explicitly programmed.

While, data mining can be defined as the process in which the unstructured
data tries to extract knowledge or unknown interesting patterns. During this
process machine, learning algorithms are used.

11) What is the difference between artificial learning and machine

learning?

Designing and developing algorithms according to the behaviours based on

empirical data are known as Machine Learning. While artificial intelligence
in addition to machine learning, it also covers other aspects like knowledge
representation, natural language processing, planning, robotics etc.
12) What is ‘Overfitting’ in Machine learning?

In machine learning, when a statistical model describes random error or

noise instead of underlying relationship ‘overfitting’ occurs.

When a model is excessively complex, overfitting is normally observed,

because of having too many parameters with respect to the number of
training data types. The model exhibits poor performance which has been
overfit.

13) Why does overfitting happen?

The possibility of overfitting exists as the criteria used for training the model
is not the same as the criteria used to judge the efficacy of a model.

14) How can you avoid overfitting ?

By using a lot of data overfitting can be avoided, overfitting happens

relatively as you have a small dataset, and you try to learn from it.

But if you have a small database and you are forced to come with a model
based on that. In such a situation, you can use a technique known as
cross validation.

In this method the dataset splits into two sections, testing and training
datasets, the testing dataset will only test the model while, in the training
dataset, the data points will come up with the model.

In this technique, a model is usually given a dataset of a known data on

which training (training data set) is run and a dataset of unknown data
against which the model is tested. The idea of cross validation is to define a
dataset to “test” the model in the training phase.

15) Which method is frequently used to prevent overfitting?

When there is sufficient data ‘Isotonic Regression’ is used to prevent an

overfitting issue.
16) What is ‘Underfitting’ in Machine learning?

Underfitting is a scenario in data science where a data model is unable to

capture the relationship between the input and output variables accurately,
generating a high error rate on both the training set and unseen data.

17) How can you avoid underfitting?

Since we can detect underfitting based on the training set, we can better
assist at establishing the dominant relationship between the input and
output variables at the onset.

By maintaining adequate model complexity, we can avoid underfitting and

make more accurate predictions.

Below are a few techniques that can be used to reduce underfitting:

● Decrease regularization
● Increase the duration of training
● Feature selection

18) How to Tackle Overfitting and Underfitting?

Overfitting means the model fitted to training data too well, in this case, we
need to resample the data and estimate the model accuracy using
techniques like k-fold cross-validation.

Whereas for the Underfitting case we are not able to understand or capture
the patterns from the data, in this case, we need to change the algorithms,
or we need to feed more data points to the model.

19) What are the five popular algorithms of Machine Learning?

● Decision Trees
● Neural Networks (back propagation)
● Probabilistic networks
● Nearest Neighbor
● Support vector machines
20) What are the different Algorithm techniques in Machine
Learning?

The different types of techniques in Machine Learning are

● Supervised Learning
● Unsupervised Learning
● Semi-supervised Learning
● Reinforcement Learning
● Transduction
● Learning to Learn

21) What is Supervised Learning?

Supervised learning is a machine learning algorithm of inferring a function

from labeled training data. The training data consists of a set of training
examples.

Example: 01

Knowing the height and weight identifying the gender of the person. Below
are the popular supervised learning algorithms.

● Support Vector Machines

● Regression
● Naive Bayes
● Decision Trees
● K-nearest Neighbour Algorithm and Neural Networks.

Example: 02

If you build a T-shirt classifier, the labels will be “this is an S, this is an M

and this is L”, based on showing the classifier examples of S, M, and L.

22) What is the standard approach to supervised learning?

The standard approach to supervised learning is to split the set of

examples into the training set and the test.
23) Explain what is the function of ‘Supervised Learning’?

● Classifications
● Speech recognition
● Regression
● Predict time series
● Annotate strings

24) What are the two methods used for the calibration in
Supervised Learning?

The two methods used for predicting good probabilities in Supervised

Learning are

● Platt Calibration
● Isotonic Regression

These methods are designed for binary classification, and it is not trivial.

25) What is Unsupervised Learning?

Unsupervised learning is also a type of machine learning algorithm used to

find patterns on the set of data given. In this, we don’t have any dependent
variable or label to predict. Unsupervised Learning Algorithms:

● Clustering,
● Anomaly Detection,
● Neural Networks and Latent Variable Models.

Example:

In the same example, a T-shirt clustering will categorize as “collar style and
V neck style”, “crew neck style” and “sleeve types”

26) Explain what is the function of ‘Unsupervised Learning’?

● Find clusters of the data

● Find low-dimensional representations of the data
● Find interesting directions in data
 ● Interesting coordinates and correlations
● Find novel observations/ database cleaning

27) What is PCA? When do you use it?

Principal component analysis (PCA) is most commonly used for dimension

reduction.

Thus making the dataset easier to visualize. PCA is used in finance,

neuroscience, and pharmacology.

It is very useful as a preprocessing step, especially when there are linear

correlations between features.

28) What is ‘Naive’ in a Naive Bayes?

The Naive Bayes method is a supervised learning algorithm, it is naive

since it makes assumptions by applying Bayes’ theorem that all attributes
are independent of each other.

29) What are the advantages of Naive Bayes?

In Naïve Bayes classifiers will converge quicker than discriminative models

like logistic regression, so you need less training data. The main advantage
is that it can’t learn interactions between features.

30) What is ‘Training set’ and ‘Test set’?

In various areas of information science like machine learning, a set of data

is used to discover the potentially predictive relationship known as ‘Training
Set’.

Training set is an example given to the learner, while the Test set is used to
test the accuracy of the hypotheses generated by the learner, and it is the
set of examples held back from the learner. Training set is distinct from the
Test set.

31) In what areas Pattern Recognition is used?

Pattern Recognition can be used in
● Computer Vision
● Speech Recognition
● Data Mining
● Statistics
● Informal Retrieval
● Bioinformatics

32) What is Cross-Validation?

Cross-validation is a method of splitting all your data into three parts:

training, testing, and validation data. Data is split into k subsets, and the
model has trained on k-1 of those datasets.

The last subset is held for testing. This is done for each of the subsets. This
is k-fold cross-validation. Finally, the scores from all the k-folds are
averaged to produce the final score.

33) What is Genetic Programming?

Genetic programming is one of the two techniques used in machine

learning. The model is based on the testing and selecting the best choice
among a set of results.

34) What is Bias in Machine Learning?

Bias in data tells us there is inconsistency in data. The inconsistency may

occur for several reasons which are not mutually exclusive.

For example, a tech giant like Amazon to speed the hiring process they
build one engine where they are going to give 100 resumes, it will spit out
the top five, and hire those.

35) Explain the Difference Between Classification and Regression?

Classification is used to produce discrete results, classification is used to

classify data into some specific categories.
For example, classifying emails into spam and non-spam categories.
Whereas, regression deals with continuous data.
For example, predicting stock prices at a certain point in time.

Classification is used to predict the output into a group of classes.

For example, Is it Hot or Cold tomorrow?

Whereas, regression is used to predict the relationship that data

represents.

For example, What is the temperature tomorrow?

36) What is Inductive Logic Programming in Machine Learning?

Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is a subfield of machine learning which

uses logical programming representing background knowledge and
examples.

37) What is Model Selection in Machine Learning?

The process of selecting models among different mathematical models,

which are used to describe the same data set is known as Model Selection.
Model selection is applied to the fields of statistics, machine learning and
data mining.

38) What is the difference between heuristic for rule learning and
heuristics for decision trees?

The difference is that the heuristics for decision trees evaluate the average
quality of a number of disjoint sets while rule learners only evaluate the
quality of the set of instances that is covered with the candidate rule.

39) What is Perceptron in Machine Learning?

In Machine Learning, Perceptron is a supervised learning algorithm for

binary classifiers where a binary classifier is a deciding function of whether
an input represents a vector or a number.

40) Explain the two components of the Bayesian logic program?

The Bayesian logic program consists of two components.

The first component is a logical one ; it consists of a set of Bayesian

Clauses, which captures the qualitative structure of the domain.

The second component is a quantitative one, it encodes the quantitative

information about the domain.

41) What are Bayesian Networks (BN) ?

Bayesian Network is used to represent the graphical model for probability

relationship among a set of variables.

42) Why is an instance based learning algorithm sometimes

referred to as a Lazy learning algorithm?

Instance based learning algorithms are also referred to as Lazy learning

algorithms as they delay the induction or generalization process until
classification is performed.

43) What are support vector machines?

Support vector machines are supervised learning algorithms used for

classification and regression analysis.

44) Explain SVM Algorithms.

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a very powerful and versatile

supervised machine learning model, capable of performing linear or
non-linear classification, regression, and even outlier detection.

45) What are Support Vectors in SVM?

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is an algorithm that tries to fit a line (or
plane or hyperplane) between the different classes that maximizes the
distance from the line to the points of the classes.
In this way, it tries to find a robust separation between the classes. The
Support Vectors are the points of the edge of the dividing hyperplane.

46) What are the two classification methods that SVM ( Support
Vector Machine) can handle?

● Combining binary classifiers

● Modifying binary to incorporate multiclass learning

47) What are Different Kernels in SVM?

There are six types of kernels in SVM:

Linear kernel - used when data is linearly separable.

Polynomial kernel - When you have discrete data that has no natural
notion of smoothness.

Radial basis kernel - Create a decision boundary able to do a much better

job of separating two classes than the linear kernel.

Sigmoid kernel - used as an activation function for neural networks.

48) What is ensemble learning?

To solve a particular computational program, multiple models such as

classifiers or experts are strategically generated and combined. This
process is known as ensemble learning.

49) Why ensemble learning is used?

Ensemble learning is used to improve the classification, prediction, function

approximation etc of a model.

50) When to use ensemble learning?

Ensemble learning is used when you build component classifiers that are
more accurate and independent from each other.
51) What are the two paradigms of ensemble methods?

The two paradigms of ensemble methods are

● Sequential ensemble methods

● Parallel ensemble methods

52) What is the general principle of an ensemble method?

The general principle of an ensemble method is to combine the predictions

of several models built with a given learning algorithm in order to improve
robustness over a single model.

53) What is bagging and boosting in an ensemble method?

Bagging is a method in ensemble for improving unstable estimation or

classification schemes. While boosting methods are used sequentially to
reduce the bias of the combined model.

Boosting and Bagging both can reduce errors by reducing the variance
term.

54) What is bias-variance decomposition of classification error in

ensemble method?

The expected error of a learning algorithm can be decomposed into bias

and variance. A bias term measures how closely the average classifier
produced by the learning algorithm matches the target function.

The variance term measures how much the learning algorithm’s prediction
fluctuates for different training sets.

55) What is an Incremental Learning algorithm in an ensemble?

Incremental learning method is the ability of an algorithm to learn from new

data that may be available after a classifier has already been generated
from an already available dataset.
56) What is PCA, KPCA and ICA used for?

PCA (Principal Components Analysis), KPCA ( Kernel based Principal

Component Analysis) and ICA ( Independent Component Analysis) are
important feature extraction techniques used for dimensionality reduction.

57) What is dimension reduction in Machine Learning?

In Machine Learning and statistics, dimension reduction is the process of

reducing the number of random variables under considerations and can be
divided into feature selection and feature extraction.

58) What are the components of relational evaluation techniques?

The important components of relational evaluation techniques are

● Data Acquisition
● Ground Truth Acquisition
● Cross Validation Technique
● Query Type
● Scoring Metric
● Significance Test

59) What are the different methods for Sequential Supervised

Learning?

The different methods to solve Sequential Supervised Learning problems

are

● Sliding-window methods
● Recurrent sliding windows
● Hidden Markow models
● Maximum entropy Markov models
● Conditional random fields
● Graph transformer networks

60) What are the areas in robotics and information processing

where sequential prediction problems arise?
The areas in robotics and information processing where sequential
prediction problem arises are

● Imitation Learning
● Structured prediction
● Model based reinforcement learning

61) What is batch statistical learning?

Statistical learning techniques allow learning a function or predictor from a

set of observed data that can make predictions about unseen or future
data. These techniques provide guarantees on the performance of the
learned predictor on the future unseen data based on a statistical
assumption on the data generating process.

62) What is PAC Learning?

PAC (Probably Approximately Correct) learning is a learning framework

that has been introduced to analyze learning algorithms and their statistical
efficiency.

63) What is sequence learning?

Sequence learning is a method of teaching and learning in a logical

manner.

64) What are the different categories you can categorise the
sequence learning process?

● Sequence prediction
● Sequence generation
● Sequence recognition
● Sequential decision

65) What are Loss Function and Cost Functions? Explain the key
Difference Between them?
When calculating loss we consider only a single data point, then we use the
term loss function.

Whereas, when calculating the sum of error for multiple data then we use
the cost function. There is no major difference.

In other words, the loss function is to capture the difference between the
actual and predicted values for a single record whereas cost functions
aggregate the difference for the entire training dataset.

66) What is a Random Forest? How does it work?

Random forest is a versatile machine learning method capable of

performing both regression and classification tasks.

Like bagging and boosting, random forest works by combining a set of

other tree models. Random forest builds a tree from a random sample of
the columns in the test data.

67) What is Collaborative Filtering? And Content-Based Filtering?

Collaborative filtering is a proven technique for personalized content

recommendations.

Collaborative filtering is a type of recommendation system that predicts

new content by matching the interests of the individual user with the
preferences of many users.

Content-based recommender systems are focused only on the preferences

of the user. New recommendations are made to the user from similar
content according to the user’s previous choices.

68) What is Clustering?

Clustering is the process of grouping a set of objects into a number of

groups. Objects should be similar to one another within the same cluster
and dissimilar to those in other clusters.

A few types of clustering are:

 ● Hierarchical clustering
● K means clustering
● Density-based clustering
● Fuzzy clustering, etc.

69) How can you select K for K-means Clustering?

There are two kinds of methods that include direct methods and statistical
testing methods:

● Direct methods: It contains elbow and silhouette

● Statistical testing methods: It has gap statistics.

The silhouette is the most frequently used while determining the optimal
value of k.

70) What are Recommender Systems?

A recommendation engine is a system used to predict users’ interests and

recommend products that are quite likely interesting for them.

Data required for recommender systems stems from explicit user ratings
after watching a film or listening to a song, from implicit search engine
queries and purchase histories, or from other knowledge about the
users/items themselves.

71) Explain Correlation and Covariance?

Correlation is used for measuring and also for estimating the quantitative
relationship between two variables. Correlation measures how strongly two
variables are related. Examples like, income and expenditure, demand and
supply, etc.

Covariance is a simple way to measure the correlation between two

variables. The problem with covariance is that they are hard to compare
without normalization.

72) What is P-value?

P-values are used to make a decision about a hypothesis test. P-value is
the minimum significant level at which you can reject the null hypothesis.
The lower the p-value, the more likely you reject the null hypothesis.

73) What are Parametric and Non-Parametric Models?

Parametric models will have limited parameters and to predict new data,
you only need to know the parameter of the model.

Non-Parametric models have no limits in taking a number of parameters,

allowing for more flexibility and to predict new data. You need to know the
state of the data and model parameters.

74) What is Reinforcement Learning?

Reinforcement learning is different from the other types of learning like

supervised and unsupervised. In reinforcement learning, we are given
neither data nor labels. Our learning is based on the rewards given to the
agent by the environment.

75) Difference Between Sigmoid and Softmax functions?

The sigmoid function is used for binary classification. The probabilities sum
needs to be 1. Whereas, Softmax function is used for multi-classification.
The probabilities sum will be 1.