Machine Learning Algorithms: A Concise Technical Overview – Part 1

Whether you are a newcomer to machine learning, a newbie to specific algorithms or concepts, or a seasoned ML vet looking for a once-over of an algorithm you haven't seen or used in a while, these short and to-the-point tutorials may provide the assistance you are looking for. Each of these posts concisely covers a single, specific machine learning concept. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are a particular classification strategy. SMVs work by transforming the training dataset into a higher dimension, which is then inspected for the optimal separation boundary, or boundaries, between classes. In SVMs, these boundaries are referred to as hyperplanes, which are identified by locating support vectors, or the instances that most essentially define classes, and their margins, which are the lines parallel to the hyperplane defined by the shortest distance between a hyperplane and its support vectors.