Machine Learning with Starbursts

Years ago in college, I took a course on the Philosophy of A.I. and Machine Learning. This course had me thinking about computers in ways I'd never thought of them before--not as abstract, magical black boxes, but as mechanical devices using simple rules. Understanding how these simple rules lead to complex processes is the key to understanding machine learning. In this article I want to demonstrate the basics of Machine Learning -- one of the more advanced and cutting edge areas of Computer Science. And as in the previous articles of this series, we're not going to need any computers.