Supervised learning 1

• A training set of examples with the correct responses (targets) is provided and, based on this
training set, the algorithm generalises to respond correctly to all possible inputs. This is also
called learning from exemplars.
• Supervised learning is the machine learning task of learning a function that maps an input to
an output based on example input-output pairs.
• In supervised learning, each example in the training set is a pair consisting of an input object
(typically a vector) and an output value.
• A supervised learning algorithm analyzes the training data and produces a function, which
can be used for mapping new examples. In the optimal case, the function will correctly
determine the class labels for unseen instances.
• Both classification and regression problems are supervised learning problems. A wide range of
supervised learning algorithms are available, each with its strengths and weaknesses.
• There is no single learning algorithm that works best on all supervised learning problems
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 2

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 3

• A “supervised learning” is so called because

the process of an algorithm learning from
the training dataset can be thought of as a
teacher supervising the learning process. We
know the correct answers (that is, the
correct outputs), the algorithm iteratively
makes predictions on the training data and
is corrected by the teacher.
• Learning stops when the algorithm achieves
an acceptable level of performance.
• Consider the following data regarding
patients entering a clinic. The data consists
of the gender and age of the patients and
each patient is labeled as “healthy” or
“sick”.
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Unsupervised learning 4

• Correct responses are not provided, but instead the algorithm tries to identify
similarities between the inputs so that inputs that have something in common are
categorised together.
• The statistical approach to unsupervised learning is known as density estimation.
• Unsupervised learning is a type of machine learning algorithm used to draw inferences
from datasets consisting of input data without labeled responses.
• In unsupervised learning algorithms, a classification or categorization is not included in
the observations. There are no output values and so there is no estimation of functions.
• Since the examples given to the learner are unlabeled, the accuracy of the structure
that is output by the algorithm cannot be evaluated.
• The most common unsupervised learning method is cluster analysis, which is used for
exploratory data analysis to find hidden patterns or grouping in data.
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 5

• Consider the following data

regarding patients entering a
clinic. The data consists of the
gender and age of the patients
• Based on this data, can we
infer anything regarding the
patients entering the clinic?

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Reinforcement learning 6

• This is somewhere between supervised and unsupervised learning. The algorithm gets
told when the answer is wrong, but does not get told how to correct it.
• It has to explore and try out different possibilities until it works out how to get the
answer right.
• Reinforcement learning is sometime called learning with a critic because of this monitor
that scores the answer, but does not suggest improvements.
• Reinforcement learning is the problem of getting an agent to act in the world so as to
maximize its rewards.
• A learner (the program) is not told what actions to take as in most forms of machine
learning, but instead must discover which actions yield the most reward by trying them.
• In the most interesting and challenging cases, actions may affect not only the
immediate reward but also the next situations and, through that, all subsequent rewards
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 7

• Consider teaching a dog a new trick: we cannot tell it what to do,

but we can reward/punish it if it does the right/wrong thing. It has
to find out what it did that made it get the reward/punishment.
• We can use a similar method to train computers to do many tasks,
such as playing backgammon or chess, scheduling jobs, and
controlling robot limbs.
• Reinforcement learning is different from supervised learning.
• Supervised learning is learning from examples provided by a
knowledgeable expert
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PERSPECTIVES AND ISSUES IN MACHINE
LEARNING 8

• One useful perspective on machine learning is that it involves searching a very large space of
possible hypotheses to determine one that best fits the observed data and any prior knowledge
held by the learner.
• For example, consider the space of hypotheses that could in principle be output by the above
checkers learner.
• This hypothesis space consists of all evaluation functions that can be represented by some choice
of values for the weights wo through w6.
• The learner's task is thus to search through this vast space to locate the hypothesis that is most
consistent with the available training examples.
• The LMS algorithm for fitting weights achieves this goal by iteratively tuning the weights, adding
a correction to each weight each time the hypothesized evaluation function predicts a value that
differs from the training value.
• This algorithm works well when the hypothesis representation considered by the learner defines
a continuously parameterized space of potential hypotheses
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 9

• Many of the chapters in this book present algorithms that search a hypothesis space defined by
some underlying representation (e.g., linear functions, logical descriptions, decision trees,
artificial neural networks).
• These different hypothesis representations are appropriate for learning different kinds of target
functions.
• For each of these hypothesis representations, the corresponding learning algorithm takes
advantage of a different underlying structure to organize the search through the hypothesis space.
• Throughout this book we will return to this perspective of learning as a search problem in order to
characterize learning methods by their search strategies and by the underlying structure of the
search spaces they explore.
• We will also find this viewpoint useful in formally analyzing the relationship between the size of
the hypothesis space to be searched, the number of training examples available, and the
confidence we can have that a hypothesis consistent with the training data will correctly
generalize to unseen examples
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Issues in Machine learning 10

Our checkers example raises a number of generic questions about machine learning. The field of machine
learning, and much of this book, is concerned with answering questions such as the following:
• What algorithms exist for learning general target functions from specific training examples? In what settings
will particular algorithms converge to the desired function, given sufficient training data? Which algorithms
perform best for which types of problems and representations?
• How much training data is sufficient? What general bounds can be found to relate the confidence in learned
hypotheses to the amount of training experience and the character of the learner's hypothesis space?
• When and how can prior knowledge held by the learner guide the process of generalizing from examples?
Can prior knowledge be helpful even when it is only approximately correct?
• What is the best strategy for choosing a useful next training experience, and how does the choice of this
strategy alter the complexity of the learning problem?
• What is the best way to reduce the learning task to one or more function approximation problems? Put
another way, what specific functions should the system attempt to learn? Can this process itself be
automated?
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• How can the learner automatically alter its representation to improve its ability to represent and learn the
target function?