- Machine learning is a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building to understand and analyze patterns in data to make decisions without explicit programming. Common applications include virtual assistants, traffic predictions, fraud detection, and recommendations.
- There are two main types of machine learning - supervised learning, where the training data is labeled and the algorithm learns from examples to predict labels for new data, and unsupervised learning, where the training data is unlabeled and the algorithm looks for hidden patterns in the data.
- Bayesian decision theory provides a statistical framework for classification problems based on quantifying costs and probabilities to determine optimal predictions. It uses Bayes' rule to calculate the posterior probability of a class given predictor values.