Introduction to Machine Learning on Microsoft Azure

Machine Learning is a science that allows computer systems to learn independently and improve themselves based on past experiences or human input. It might sound like a new technique, but the truth is that some of our most common interactions with our apps and the Internet are driven by automatic suggestions or recommendations, and some companies even make decisions using predictions based on past data and machine learning algorithms. This technology comes in handy specially when handling Big Data. Today, companies collect and accumulate data at massive, unmanageable rates (websites clicks, credit card transactions, GPS trails, social media interactions, etc.), and it's becoming a challenge to process all this valuable information and use it in a meaningful way. This is where rule-based algorithms fall short: machine learning algorithms use all the collected, "past" data to learn patterns and predict results (insights) that helps make better business decisions. Let's take a look at some examples of machine learning.