Introduction To Statistical Machine Learning

An Introduction to Statistical Learning provides an accessible overview of the field of statistical learning, an essential toolset for making sense of the vast and complex data sets that have emerged in fields ranging from biology to finance to marketing to astrophysics in the past twenty years. This book presents some of the most important modeling and prediction techniques, along with relevant applications. Topics include linear regression, classification, resampling methods, shrinkage approaches, tree-based methods, support vector machines, clustering, and more. Color graphics and real-world examples are used to illustrate the methods presented. Since the goal of this textbook is to facilitate the use of these statistical learning techniques by practitioners in science, industry, and other fields, each chapter contains a tutorial on implementing the analyses and methods presented in R, an extremely popular open source statistical software platform. Two of the authors co-wrote The Elements of Statistical Learning (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, 2nd edition 2009), a popular reference book for statistics and machine learning researchers. An Introduction to Statistical Learning covers many of the same topics, but at a level accessible to a much broader audience. This book is targeted at statisticians and non-statisticians alike who wish to use cutting-edge statistical learning techniques to analyze their data. The text assumes only a previous course in linear regression and no knowledge of matrix algebra.

Machine learning allows computers to learn and discern patterns without actually being programmed. When Statistical techniques and machine learning are combined together they are a powerful tool for analysing various kinds of data in many computer science/engineering areas including, image processing, speech processing, natural language processing, robot control, as well as in fundamental sciences such as biology, medicine, astronomy, physics, and materials. Introduction to Statistical Machine Learning provides a general introduction to machine learning that covers a wide range of topics concisely and will help you bridge the gap between theory and practice. Part I discusses the fundamental concepts of statistics and probability that are used in describing machine learning algorithms. Part II and Part III explain the two major approaches of machine learning techniques; generative methods and discriminative methods. While Part III provides an in-depth look at advanced topics that play essential roles in making machine learning algorithms more useful in practice. The accompanying MATLAB/Octave programs provide you with the necessary practical skills needed to accomplish a wide range of data analysis tasks. Provides the necessary background material to understand machine learning such as statistics, probability, linear algebra, and calculus. Complete coverage of the generative approach to statistical pattern recognition and the discriminative approach to statistical machine learning. Includes MATLAB/Octave programs so that readers can test the algorithms numerically and acquire both mathematical and practical skills in a wide range of data analysis tasks Discusses a wide range of applications in machine learning and statistics and provides examples drawn from image processing, speech processing, natural language processing, robot control, as well as biology, medicine, astronomy, physics, and materials.

Machine learning allows computers to learn and discern patterns without actually being programmed. When Statistical techniques and machine learning are combined together they are a powerful tool for analysing various kinds of data in many computer science/engineering areas including, image processing, speech processing, natural language processing, robot control, as well as in fundamental sciences such as biology, medicine, astronomy, physics, and materials. Introduction to Statistical Machine Learning provides a general introduction to machine learning that covers a wide range of topics concisely and will help you bridge the gap between theory and practice. Part I discusses the fundamental concepts of statistics and probability that are used in describing machine learning algorithms. Part II and Part III explain the two major approaches of machine learning techniques; generative methods and discriminative methods. While Part III provides an in-depth look at advanced topics that play essential roles in making machine learning algorithms more useful in practice. The accompanying MATLAB/Octave programs provide you with the necessary practical skills needed to accomplish a wide range of data analysis tasks. Provides the necessary background material to understand machine learning such as statistics, probability, linear algebra, and calculus. Complete coverage of the generative approach to statistical pattern recognition and the discriminative approach to statistical machine learning. Includes MATLAB/Octave programs so that readers can test the algorithms numerically and acquire both mathematical and practical skills in a wide range of data analysis tasks Discusses a wide range of applications in machine learning and statistics and provides examples drawn from image processing, speech processing, natural language processing, robot control, as well as biology, medicine, astronomy, physics, and materials.

Boost your understanding of data science techniques to solve real-world problems Data science is an exciting, interdisciplinary field that extracts insights from data to solve business problems. This book introduces common data science techniques and methods and shows you how to apply them in real-world case studies. From data preparation and exploration to model assessment and deployment, this book describes every stage of the analytics life cycle, including a comprehensive overview of unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques. The book guides you through the necessary steps to pick the best techniques and models and then implement those models to successfully address the original business need. No software is shown in the book, and mathematical details are kept to a minimum. This allows you to develop an understanding of the fundamentals of data science, no matter what background or experience level you have.

The recent rapid growth in the variety and complexity of new machine learning architectures requires the development of improved methods for designing, analyzing, evaluating, and communicating machine learning technologies. Statistical Machine Learning: A Unified Framework provides students, engineers, and scientists with tools from mathematical statistics and nonlinear optimization theory to become experts in the field of machine learning. In particular, the material in this text directly supports the mathematical analysis and design of old, new, and not-yet-invented nonlinear high-dimensional machine learning algorithms. Features: Unified empirical risk minimization framework supports rigorous mathematical analyses of widely used supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement machine learning algorithms Matrix calculus methods for supporting machine learning analysis and design applications Explicit conditions for ensuring convergence of adaptive, batch, minibatch, MCEM, and MCMC learning algorithms that minimize both unimodal and multimodal objective functions Explicit conditions for characterizing asymptotic properties of M-estimators and model selection criteria such as AIC and BIC in the presence of possible model misspecification This advanced text is suitable for graduate students or highly motivated undergraduate students in statistics, computer science, electrical engineering, and applied mathematics. The text is self-contained and only assumes knowledge of lower-division linear algebra and upper-division probability theory. Students, professional engineers, and multidisciplinary scientists possessing these minimal prerequisites will find this text challenging yet accessible. About the Author: Richard M. Golden (Ph.D., M.S.E.E., B.S.E.E.) is Professor of Cognitive Science and Participating Faculty Member in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Golden has published articles and given talks at scientific conferences on a wide range of topics in the fields of both statistics and machine learning over the past three decades. His long-term research interests include identifying conditions for the convergence of deterministic and stochastic machine learning algorithms and investigating estimation and inference in the presence of possibly misspecified probability models.

Reinforcement learning is a mathematical framework for developing computer agents that can learn an optimal behavior by relating generic reward signals with its past actions. With numerous successful applications in business intelligence, plant control, and gaming, the RL framework is ideal for decision making in unknown environments with large amo

A practitioner’s tools have a direct impact on the success of his or her work. This book will provide the data scientist with the tools and techniques required to excel with statistical learning methods in the areas of data access, data munging, exploratory data analysis, supervised machine learning, unsupervised machine learning and model evaluation. Machine learning and data science are large disciplines, requiring years of study in order to gain proficiency. This book can be viewed as a set of essential tools we need for a long-term career in the data science field – recommendations are provided for further study in order to build advanced skills in tackling important data problem domains. The R statistical environment was chosen for use in this book. R is a growing phenomenon worldwide, with many data scientists using it exclusively for their project work. All of the code examples for the book are written in R. In addition, many popular R packages and data sets will be used.

A thought-provoking look at statistical learning theory and its role in understanding human learning and inductive reasoning A joint endeavor from leading researchers in the fields of philosophy and electrical engineering, An Elementary Introduction to Statistical Learning Theory is a comprehensive and accessible primer on the rapidly evolving fields of statistical pattern recognition and statistical learning theory. Explaining these areas at a level and in a way that is not often found in other books on the topic, the authors present the basic theory behind contemporary machine learning and uniquely utilize its foundations as a framework for philosophical thinking about inductive inference. Promoting the fundamental goal of statistical learning, knowing what is achievable and what is not, this book demonstrates the value of a systematic methodology when used along with the needed techniques for evaluating the performance of a learning system. First, an introduction to machine learning is presented that includes brief discussions of applications such as image recognition, speech recognition, medical diagnostics, and statistical arbitrage. To enhance accessibility, two chapters on relevant aspects of probability theory are provided. Subsequent chapters feature coverage of topics such as the pattern recognition problem, optimal Bayes decision rule, the nearest neighbor rule, kernel rules, neural networks, support vector machines, and boosting. Appendices throughout the book explore the relationship between the discussed material and related topics from mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and statistics, drawing insightful connections between problems in these areas and statistical learning theory. All chapters conclude with a summary section, a set of practice questions, and a reference sections that supplies historical notes and additional resources for further study. An Elementary Introduction to Statistical Learning Theory is an excellent book for courses on statistical learning theory, pattern recognition, and machine learning at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It also serves as an introductory reference for researchers and practitioners in the fields of engineering, computer science, philosophy, and cognitive science that would like to further their knowledge of the topic.

Build Machine Learning models with a sound statistical understanding. About This Book Learn about the statistics behind powerful predictive models with p-value, ANOVA, and F- statistics. Implement statistical computations programmatically for supervised and unsupervised learning through K-means clustering. Master the statistical aspect of Machine Learning with the help of this example-rich guide to R and Python. Who This Book Is For This book is intended for developers with little to no background in statistics, who want to implement Machine Learning in their systems. Some programming knowledge in R or Python will be useful. What You Will Learn Understand the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals necessary to build models Understand the major differences and parallels between the statistical way and the Machine Learning way to solve problems Learn how to prepare data and feed models by using the appropriate Machine Learning algorithms from the more-than-adequate R and Python packages Analyze the results and tune the model appropriately to your own predictive goals Understand the concepts of required statistics for Machine Learning Introduce yourself to necessary fundamentals required for building supervised & unsupervised deep learning models Learn reinforcement learning and its application in the field of artificial intelligence domain In Detail Complex statistics in Machine Learning worry a lot of developers. Knowing statistics helps you build strong Machine Learning models that are optimized for a given problem statement. This book will teach you all it takes to perform complex statistical computations required for Machine Learning. You will gain information on statistics behind supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and more. Understand the real-world examples that discuss the statistical side of Machine Learning and familiarize yourself with it. You will also design programs for performing tasks such as model, parameter fitting, regression, classification, density collection, and more. By the end of the book, you will have mastered the required statistics for Machine Learning and will be able to apply your new skills to any sort of industry problem. Style and approach This practical, step-by-step guide will give you an understanding of the Statistical and Machine Learning fundamentals you'll need to build models.

Advanced statistical modeling and knowledge representation techniques for a newly emerging area of machine learning and probabilistic reasoning; includes introductory material, tutorials for different proposed approaches, and applications. Handling inherent uncertainty and exploiting compositional structure are fundamental to understanding and designing large-scale systems. Statistical relational learning builds on ideas from probability theory and statistics to address uncertainty while incorporating tools from logic, databases and programming languages to represent structure. In Introduction to Statistical Relational Learning, leading researchers in this emerging area of machine learning describe current formalisms, models, and algorithms that enable effective and robust reasoning about richly structured systems and data. The early chapters provide tutorials for material used in later chapters, offering introductions to representation, inference and learning in graphical models, and logic. The book then describes object-oriented approaches, including probabilistic relational models, relational Markov networks, and probabilistic entity-relationship models as well as logic-based formalisms including Bayesian logic programs, Markov logic, and stochastic logic programs. Later chapters discuss such topics as probabilistic models with unknown objects, relational dependency networks, reinforcement learning in relational domains, and information extraction. By presenting a variety of approaches, the book highlights commonalities and clarifies important differences among proposed approaches and, along the way, identifies important representational and algorithmic issues. Numerous applications are provided throughout.

AN INTRODUCTION TO MACHINE LEARNING THAT INCLUDES THE FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES, METHODS, AND APPLICATIONS Machine Learning: a Concise Introduction offers a comprehensive introduction to the core concepts, approaches, and applications of machine learning. The author—an expert in the field—presents fundamental ideas, terminology, and techniques for solving applied problems in classification, regression, clustering, density estimation, and dimension reduction. The design principles behind the techniques are emphasized, including the bias-variance trade-off and its influence on the design of ensemble methods. Understanding these principles leads to more flexible and successful applications. Machine Learning: a Concise Introduction also includes methods for optimization, risk estimation, and model selection— essential elements of most applied projects. This important resource: Illustrates many classification methods with a single, running example, highlighting similarities and differences between methods Presents R source code which shows how to apply and interpret many of the techniques covered Includes many thoughtful exercises as an integral part of the text, with an appendix of selected solutions Contains useful information for effectively communicating with clients A volume in the popular Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics, Machine Learning: a Concise Introduction offers the practical information needed for an understanding of the methods and application of machine learning. STEVEN W. KNOX holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois and an M.S. in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. He has over twenty years’ experience in using Machine Learning, Statistics, and Mathematics to solve real-world problems. He currently serves as Technical Director of Mathematics Research and Senior Advocate for Data Science at the National Security Agency.

This book presents the Statistical Learning Theory in a detailed and easy to understand way, by using practical examples, algorithms and source codes. It can be used as a textbook in graduation or undergraduation courses, for self-learners, or as reference with respect to the main theoretical concepts of Machine Learning. Fundamental concepts of Linear Algebra and Optimization applied to Machine Learning are provided, as well as source codes in R, making the book as self-contained as possible. It starts with an introduction to Machine Learning concepts and algorithms such as the Perceptron, Multilayer Perceptron and the Distance-Weighted Nearest Neighbors with examples, in order to provide the necessary foundation so the reader is able to understand the Bias-Variance Dilemma, which is the central point of the Statistical Learning Theory. Afterwards, we introduce all assumptions and formalize the Statistical Learning Theory, allowing the practical study of different classification algorithms. Then, we proceed with concentration inequalities until arriving to the Generalization and the Large-Margin bounds, providing the main motivations for the Support Vector Machines. From that, we introduce all necessary optimization concepts related to the implementation of Support Vector Machines. To provide a next stage of development, the book finishes with a discussion on SVM kernels as a way and motivation to study data spaces and improve classification results.

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This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to Machine Learning techniques and algorithms. This Third Edition covers newer approaches that have become highly topical, including deep learning, and auto-encoding, introductory information about temporal learning and hidden Markov models, and a much more detailed treatment of reinforcement learning. The book is written in an easy-to-understand manner with many examples and pictures, and with a lot of practical advice and discussions of simple applications. The main topics include Bayesian classifiers, nearest-neighbor classifiers, linear and polynomial classifiers, decision trees, rule-induction programs, artificial neural networks, support vector machines, boosting algorithms, unsupervised learning (including Kohonen networks and auto-encoding), deep learning, reinforcement learning, temporal learning (including long short-term memory), hidden Markov models, and the genetic algorithm. Special attention is devoted to performance evaluation, statistical assessment, and to many practical issues ranging from feature selection and feature construction to bias, context, multi-label domains, and the problem of imbalanced classes.

During the past decade there has been an explosion in computation and information technology. With it have come vast amounts of data in a variety of fields such as medicine, biology, finance, and marketing. The challenge of understanding these data has led to the development of new tools in the field of statistics, and spawned new areas such as data mining, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Many of these tools have common underpinnings but are often expressed with different terminology. This book describes the important ideas in these areas in a common conceptual framework. While the approach is statistical, the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics. Many examples are given, with a liberal use of color graphics. It should be a valuable resource for statisticians and anyone interested in data mining in science or industry. The book’s coverage is broad, from supervised learning (prediction) to unsupervised learning. The many topics include neural networks, support vector machines, classification trees and boosting---the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in any book. This major new edition features many topics not covered in the original, including graphical models, random forests, ensemble methods, least angle regression & path algorithms for the lasso, non-negative matrix factorization, and spectral clustering. There is also a chapter on methods for “wide” data (p bigger than n), including multiple testing and false discovery rates. Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman are professors of statistics at Stanford University. They are prominent researchers in this area: Hastie and Tibshirani developed generalized additive models and wrote a popular book of that title. Hastie co-developed much of the statistical modeling software and environment in R/S-PLUS and invented principal curves and surfaces. Tibshirani proposed the lasso and is co-author of the very successful An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Friedman is the co-inventor of many data-mining tools including CART, MARS, projection pursuit and gradient boosting.

This book provides a broad yet detailed introduction to neural networks and machine learning in a statistical framework. A single, comprehensive resource for study and further research, it explores the major popular neural network models and statistical learning approaches with examples and exercises and allows readers to gain a practical working understanding of the content. This updated new edition presents recently published results and includes six new chapters that correspond to the recent advances in computational learning theory, sparse coding, deep learning, big data and cloud computing. Each chapter features state-of-the-art descriptions and significant research findings. The topics covered include: • multilayer perceptron; • the Hopfield network; • associative memory models;• clustering models and algorithms; • t he radial basis function network; • recurrent neural networks; • nonnegative matrix factorization; • independent component analysis; •probabilistic and Bayesian networks; and • fuzzy sets and logic. Focusing on the prominent accomplishments and their practical aspects, this book provides academic and technical staff, as well as graduate students and researchers with a solid foundation and comprehensive reference on the fields of neural networks, pattern recognition, signal processing, and machine learning.

Discover New Methods for Dealing with High-Dimensional Data A sparse statistical model has only a small number of nonzero parameters or weights; therefore, it is much easier to estimate and interpret than a dense model. Statistical Learning with Sparsity: The Lasso and Generalizations presents methods that exploit sparsity to help recover the underlying signal in a set of data. Top experts in this rapidly evolving field, the authors describe the lasso for linear regression and a simple coordinate descent algorithm for its computation. They discuss the application of l1 penalties to generalized linear models and support vector machines, cover generalized penalties such as the elastic net and group lasso, and review numerical methods for optimization. They also present statistical inference methods for fitted (lasso) models, including the bootstrap, Bayesian methods, and recently developed approaches. In addition, the book examines matrix decomposition, sparse multivariate analysis, graphical models, and compressed sensing. It concludes with a survey of theoretical results for the lasso. In this age of big data, the number of features measured on a person or object can be large and might be larger than the number of observations. This book shows how the sparsity assumption allows us to tackle these problems and extract useful and reproducible patterns from big datasets. Data analysts, computer scientists, and theorists will appreciate this thorough and up-to-date treatment of sparse statistical modeling.

The goal of machine learning is to program computers to use example data or past experience to solve a given problem. Many successful applications of machine learning exist already, including systems that analyze past sales data to predict customer behavior, optimize robot behavior so that a task can be completed using minimum resources, and extract knowledge from bioinformatics data. Introduction to Machine Learning is a comprehensive textbook on the subject, covering a broad array of topics not usually included in introductory machine learning texts. Subjects include supervised learning; Bayesian decision theory; parametric, semi-parametric, and nonparametric methods; multivariate analysis; hidden Markov models; reinforcement learning; kernel machines; graphical models; Bayesian estimation; and statistical testing.Machine learning is rapidly becoming a skill that computer science students must master before graduation. The third edition of Introduction to Machine Learning reflects this shift, with added support for beginners, including selected solutions for exercises and additional example data sets (with code available online). Other substantial changes include discussions of outlier detection; ranking algorithms for perceptrons and support vector machines; matrix decomposition and spectral methods; distance estimation; new kernel algorithms; deep learning in multilayered perceptrons; and the nonparametric approach to Bayesian methods. All learning algorithms are explained so that students can easily move from the equations in the book to a computer program. The book can be used by both advanced undergraduates and graduate students. It will also be of interest to professionals who are concerned with the application of machine learning methods.

Statistical Foundations of Data Science gives a thorough introduction to commonly used statistical models, contemporary statistical machine learning techniques and algorithms, along with their mathematical insights and statistical theories. It aims to serve as a graduate-level textbook and a research monograph on high-dimensional statistics, sparsity and covariance learning, machine learning, and statistical inference. It includes ample exercises that involve both theoretical studies as well as empirical applications. The book begins with an introduction to the stylized features of big data and their impacts on statistical analysis. It then introduces multiple linear regression and expands the techniques of model building via nonparametric regression and kernel tricks. It provides a comprehensive account on sparsity explorations and model selections for multiple regression, generalized linear models, quantile regression, robust regression, hazards regression, among others. High-dimensional inference is also thoroughly addressed and so is feature screening. The book also provides a comprehensive account on high-dimensional covariance estimation, learning latent factors and hidden structures, as well as their applications to statistical estimation, inference, prediction and machine learning problems. It also introduces thoroughly statistical machine learning theory and methods for classification, clustering, and prediction. These include CART, random forests, boosting, support vector machines, clustering algorithms, sparse PCA, and deep learning.

Distills key concepts from linear algebra, geometry, matrices, calculus, optimization, probability and statistics that are used in machine learning.