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You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

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Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#61

Post by mcrad »

posix_compliant wrote: post #44

Good post, but I couldn't disagree more. Regardless of your business size, it will always be valuable to know information such as: * How does every additional coupon-dollar affect the total amount a customer buys? * What is the relationship between customer age and retention for my store? * Does giving a customer more purchase options help or hurt their chances of making a purchase? My experience is that each of thes…

Ha - maybe a SQL layer is lurking behind the scenes, crafting the input variables that make your little python script so powerful

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#62

Post by oh-kumudo »

itronitron wrote: post #51
oh-kumudo wrote: post #26

The title is often true, but it doesn't mean too much or anything. And the same argument is brought up again and again in the past as well. What OP suggests, the so called SQL, is basically a heuristic based system. When done probably and carefully, it could of course work very well, and is indeed often used as baseline model to bootstrap a ML system. However, eventually the rule-based system will hit the wall, and M…

that is quite a leap to call SQL a rule-based system. SQL is a standard query language that you can use to discover how attributes and values relate to one another within data.

> standard query language that you can use to discover how attributes and values relate to one another within data.

That doesn't make it not a rule-based system. There is no learning component in SQL.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#63

Post by reificator »

gkya wrote: post #49
reificator wrote: post #4

I like to think I'm not too nitpicky about fonts, but that st ligature is incredibly distracting. It's the second article I've seen here that uses it over the last few days, but I'm not sure if it's the same site or not.

In the modern age Latin script, the only acceptable ligature is "fi" in a proportional type, because the top curve of the F usually comes very close to the dot of the I already. For the rest, they're totally useless because we don't use moveable type anymore.

Well, I also tend to enjoy programming ligatures, such as != becoming ≠ or => becoming ⇒. (but in a size proportional to the pair of fixed width characters, see https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode )

But then I don't inflict them on anyone but myself and people who look over my shoulder...

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#64

Post by hedora »

jaequery wrote: post #11

sql is great but i am still waiting for the succesor to sql. sql was made for relational data. but a relational data with nested data structure kind of like postgres and jsonb built in mind from the ground up is what id really like to see.

Look at IMS or CODASYL from the 70s, or xml/object databases from the 90s. They did what you’re asking for.

Both times, the eventual consensus was that sql was simpler to implement and use, but maybe marginally slower. Then machines got faster, so SQL dominated the market for decades.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#65

Post by Nasrudith »

I think this highlights a problem separate from machine learning, block chain, and similar vs the tried and proven technologies and a long standing one: attempting to solve via understanding vs seeking the simple solution to avoid thinking about it.

Ironic that machine learning is 'simple' but that seems to be the case at times especially with the 'throw block chain or machine learning at it' approach when a proper algorithm could do it far more efficiently. The funny thing is that both approaches have their place. If turning it off and on again fixes a rare issue faster than following every instruction to machine code you are better off restarting it occasionally - unless it is a critical application where doing so will cost millions of dollars or lives.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#66

Post by apatters »

whoisjuan wrote: post #36
gwbas1c wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm niave, but are there really people who want to hop on the AI bandwagon just to do mundane lookups like this? When I worked with machine learning many years ago, we learned that it was no better than the heuristics already in place. The thing is, it's much easier to diagnose a well written and understood heuristic than a machine learning model.

Machine Learning is usually seeen as a magic black box by many people. So yes. There's a recent trend that seems to favor a machine learning first approach to solve very simple and mundane problems because people feel that they are missing some magic insight if they don't do it (FOMO). For example, the author refers to a shopping newsletter where you personalize suggestions for certain products after a customer buys…

Another fun thing is that you will learn a lot more about your customer base if you do the research and write those heuristics yourself, vs. having ML do them. A business that understands the behavior of its customers is much more competitive than one which delegates that understanding to a black box. I don't contend that ML has no valuable (even transformative) applications but it's not a substitute for personally understanding every detail of your market.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#67

Post by wodenokoto »

shadowmint wrote: post #50
tfehring wrote: post #40

> say a person bought a pair of shoe, sunglasses and a book. For their newsletter, we will show include shoes, sunglasses and books. This was a lot more relevant than sending random stuff. I agree with the general sentiment of the article, but this seems like a poor example, since a more sophisticated approach can add a lot of value to a recommendation system. How do you know whether a customer is likely to want more…

Obviously ML can add a lot of value here, but its questionable to me if its trivial to build such a model with available data, keep said model up to date, or train variations on it easily, cheaply and quickly enough to A/B test the result and ensure you’re actually making any tangible difference. So you know... I don’t think it’s unfair to say that for smaller vendors, the cost/effort of setting up a ML model may dwa…

But the SQL approach at best only answers which item type to present the customer.

How does the query make a good decision on the specific item?

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#68

Post by wvenable »

jaequery wrote: post #11

sql is great but i am still waiting for the succesor to sql. sql was made for relational data. but a relational data with nested data structure kind of like postgres and jsonb built in mind from the ground up is what id really like to see.

Most data is relational. Even if you think it isn't relational, it probably is still relational.

Also if you think you have unstructured data but you need to interpret every bit of that data, then it's not unstructured.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#69

Post by paulie_a »

reificator wrote: post #4

I like to think I'm not too nitpicky about fonts, but that st ligature is incredibly distracting. It's the second article I've seen here that uses it over the last few days, but I'm not sure if it's the same site or not.

That is why I disable custom fonts. Everything on the web is one of two fonts for me, sizes 9-14. I've been doing it for a decade and it makes websites so much better.

Re: You don't need ML/AI, you need SQL

#70

Post by threeseed »

whoisjuan wrote: post #36
gwbas1c wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm niave, but are there really people who want to hop on the AI bandwagon just to do mundane lookups like this? When I worked with machine learning many years ago, we learned that it was no better than the heuristics already in place. The thing is, it's much easier to diagnose a well written and understood heuristic than a machine learning model.

Machine Learning is usually seeen as a magic black box by many people. So yes. There's a recent trend that seems to favor a machine learning first approach to solve very simple and mundane problems because people feel that they are missing some magic insight if they don't do it (FOMO). For example, the author refers to a shopping newsletter where you personalize suggestions for certain products after a customer buys…

Machine learning can be implemented in just a few lines of code using something like Amazon Sagemaker to manage the process. In some cases it can be less work than hand crafting dozens and dozens of business rules.

And just because you have a small website doesn’t mean you have to behave like you have a small website.

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