What is Machine Learning?

The term Machine Learning might sound a bit intimidating. It is sometimes associated with scary accurate recommender systems or humanoid robots. However, the fundamentals of machine learning are actually not that complicated. If you, as a human, were given two (x, y) coordinates and had to draw a line through these points, you'd probably do this without much effort. However, if someone asked you to draw a line based on 1 million (x, y) coordinates, you'd probably politely tell this person to fuck off.