How to Define a Machine Learning Problem Like a Detective

This article was originally published on OpenDataScience.com. Let's see if we can start down that direction by laying the groundwork for the very fundamentals of our understanding of machine learning – namely, what actually constitutes a machine learning problem? It's kind of strange question that you might think you know the answer to, but it actually has a very formal definition that we'll outline here. The most important step you can take is to start by asking yourself: do I think there's a pattern? The fundamental assumption that underlies all machine learning problems is that there is a pattern.