An Introduction to Machine Learning Theory and Its Applications: A Visual Tutorial with Examples

No discussion of ML would be complete without at least mentioning neural networks. Not only do neural nets offer an extremely powerful tool to solve very tough problems, but they also offer fascinating hints at the workings of our own brains, and intriguing possibilities for one day creating truly intelligent machines. Neural networks are well suited to machine learning problems where the number of inputs is gigantic. The computational cost of handling such a problem is just too overwhelming for the types of systems we've discussed above. As it turns out, however, neural networks can be effectively tuned using techniques that are strikingly similar to gradient descent in principle. A thorough discussion of neural networks is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but I recommend checking out our previous post on the subject.