The Essence of Machine Learning

I thought I would end off the year with a not-so-serious post about capturing the essence of machine learning. In the past, you have undoubtedly explored a variety of in-depth and semi in-depth offerings on what machine learning is, and explored its relationships to numerous other topics. Starting from some initial common point of reference when discussing such complex concepts is always a good idea; the problem is, there exist innumerable initial common points of reference for a topics such as machine learning. So I thought, why not examine some of these points of reference? And now, without further ado, as an exercise in what may seem to be semantics, let's explore some 30,000 feet definitions of what machine learning is.