The What & Why of Machine Learning

Today, several product vendors talk about using machine learning for a variety of reasons such as to make intelligent predictions and to understand customers better and provide a more personalized service. However, usually, the details of how exactly these vendors employ machine learning is a little mushy. A few years ago, in one of my earlier organizations, we decided to make learning recommendations more relevant for employees. In addition to scanning an employee's profile and previous learning history, we coded the application to look at his peer group – what others in his own team/ organization/ career level were learning, and make useful learning recommendations. This application was definitely smarter than a system that made uni-dimensional suggestions – for e.g.