Live data from Hacker News

Machine Learning for Developers

xyclade.github.io

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#31

Is anyone else at least a bit worried about a bunch of developers running around doing "machine learning" without much understanding of mathematics and probability? E.g. consider the creation of fragile models that overfit data being used in finance, infrastructure, medicine, etc.

"Developers" should gain expertise in their problem domain, including understanding the mathematics and probability behind it.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#32

Is anyone else at least a bit worried about a bunch of developers running around doing "machine learning" without much understanding of mathematics and probability? E.g. consider the creation of fragile models that overfit data being used in finance, infrastructure, medicine, etc.

Yes, but I also worry about a bunch of theorists writing substandard code that is unreadable and unmaintainable.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#34

Is anyone else at least a bit worried about a bunch of developers running around doing "machine learning" without much understanding of mathematics and probability? E.g. consider the creation of fragile models that overfit data being used in finance, infrastructure, medicine, etc.

Is that any different from a bunch of developers plugging in magic numbers into a formula that they made up, which (to a first approximation) is roughly what happens now? Realistically, the outcome will be the same as it is now: those firms whose models don't reflect reality will blow up, those whose do will get bigger, a few will get too big to fail off some very confidently-expressed models and make a lot of people…

> those firms whose models don't reflect reality will blow up,

I'm picturing one of those dystopic films/novels where the main character is deleted/fired/jailed as a result of an algorithm error. Yes, in real life the trends will overcome the bad models. But just think of the potential consequences for harm on an individual basis!

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#35
post #32

Is anyone else at least a bit worried about a bunch of developers running around doing "machine learning" without much understanding of mathematics and probability? E.g. consider the creation of fragile models that overfit data being used in finance, infrastructure, medicine, etc.

Yes, but I also worry about a bunch of theorists writing substandard code that is unreadable and unmaintainable.

And creating "fragile" models because they don't have the tools to reproduce their own experiments. How many authors of academic papers in ML could reproduce the exact same results a year later? I would guess around 10%.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that any different from a bunch of developers plugging in magic numbers into a formula that they made up, which (to a first approximation) is roughly what happens now? Realistically, the outcome will be the same as it is now: those firms whose models don't reflect reality will blow up, those whose do will get bigger, a few will get too big to fail off some very confidently-expressed models and make a lot of people…

> those firms whose models don't reflect reality will blow up, I'm picturing one of those dystopic films/novels where the main character is deleted/fired/jailed as a result of an algorithm error. Yes, in real life the trends will overcome the bad models. But just think of the potential consequences for harm on an individual basis!

That's sorta the way society has functioned for millenia. In the 20th century alone, hundreds of millions of people have died miserable deaths because some guy in power had an incorrect model of reality.

It sucks, it's not fair or just, and everything would run more smoothly if we were omniscient beings living in a completely egalitarian society. Unfortunately, that's not the reality we live in. In the meantime, we accept it as simply fate or vulnerability, and muddle through as best as we can.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#38

Is anyone else at least a bit worried about a bunch of developers running around doing "machine learning" without much understanding of mathematics and probability? E.g. consider the creation of fragile models that overfit data being used in finance, infrastructure, medicine, etc.

I'm a little bit worried. At least at the same level as when I see a bunch of developers compiling programs without much understanding of what an LL(k) parser does, or how a pushdown automaton works, or what a Turing machine is. I usually feel the same every time I see an elevator without a liftman, don't compute a square root by hand, or hear about Google self-driving cars.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#39

Is there a decent introduction to scala as a language with real world ML? I've come across various ML primers that go into detail on PCA, Linear regression, etc. But not any that show real world ML usage i.e. if person listen to music of type X they'll also like Y. Face detection, etc.

Check out our project, [KeystoneML](http://keystone-ml.org/) - it's geared to large scale machine learning in the realms of computer vision, NLP, and (soon) speech. The design is modular and engineering-friendly and is quite focused on real-world applications. (e.g. start with pictures, do the feature extraction, PCA, linear regression, etc.) and out comes a classifier.

Re: Machine Learning for Developers

#40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I also worry about a bunch of theorists writing substandard code that is unreadable and unmaintainable.

And creating "fragile" models because they don't have the tools to reproduce their own experiments. How many authors of academic papers in ML could reproduce the exact same results a year later? I would guess around 10%.

This pisses me off so much. I'm not a mathematician, but I like to think I'm a pretty good programmer. I feel like I could pick up a mathematical concept described in a computer science paper more easily if I could actually see the damn code and run it myself. But most of the papers I've read haven't mentioned where to find the referenced source code or, if they do, it's either horribly written and only runs on the author's machine or it requires specialized software that only a university could afford.
Post reply on HN