Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Machine Learning with R

You're reading from   Machine Learning with R R gives you access to the cutting-edge software you need to prepare data for machine learning. No previous knowledge required – this book will take you methodically through every stage of applying machine learning.

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Oct 2013
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781782162148
Length 396 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Brett Lantz Brett Lantz
Author Profile Icon Brett Lantz
Brett Lantz
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (19) Chapters Close

Machine Learning with R
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
1. Introducing Machine Learning 2. Managing and Understanding Data FREE CHAPTER 3. Lazy Learning – Classification Using Nearest Neighbors 4. Probabilistic Learning – Classification Using Naive Bayes 5. Divide and Conquer – Classification Using Decision Trees and Rules 6. Forecasting Numeric Data – Regression Methods 7. Black Box Methods – Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines 8. Finding Patterns – Market Basket Analysis Using Association Rules 9. Finding Groups of Data – Clustering with k-means 10. Evaluating Model Performance 11. Improving Model Performance 12. Specialized Machine Learning Topics Index

Chapter 7. Black Box Methods – Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines

The late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This chapter covers a pair of machine learning methods that may, likewise, appear at first glance to be magic. As two of the most powerful machine learning algorithms, they are applied to tasks across many domains. However, their inner workings can be difficult to understand.

In engineering, these are referred to as black box processes because the mechanism that transforms the input into the output is obfuscated by a figurative box. The reasons for the opacity can vary; for instance, black box closed source software intentionally conceals proprietary algorithms, the black box of sausage-making involves a bit of purposeful (but tasty) ignorance, and the black box of political lawmaking is rooted in bureaucratic processes. In the case of machine learning, the black box is because the...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime
Banner background image