Finding your data
In some ways, if you’re worried about machine learning taking over the world, you can shut the gate – it’s already happening. It already helps choose the videos you stream, the stuff you buy, even who you’ll date. Over the last year, we’ve looked at different ways you can execute machine learning algorithms, from coding with R and Python, to not coding and using a GUI-based tool like Weka instead. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter what your preferred option is if you don’t have data - and its society’s insatiable desire for data that now drives industry, governments and research forward.
NO SILVER BULLET
Although we talk freely book. But like most things, machine learning can only work with what you give it and if you feed it poor, irrelevant data, the chances are high the results you’ll get won’t be great. In other words – rubbish in, rubbish out. That’s why the vast majority of time in many machine learning projects is spent on data – acquiring it, processing it and making sure it’s in the right form that a machine learning algorithm can work with.
