Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

Statistical Analysis With Missing Data (2nd ed.) (Book)

Computer Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

Much previous work in artificial intelligence has neglected representing time in all its complexity. In particular, it has neglected continuous change and the indeterminacy of the future. To rectify this, I have developed a first-order temporal logic, in which it is possible to name and prove things about facts, events, plans, and world histories. In particular, the logic provides analyses of causality, continuous change in quantities, the persistence of facts (the frame problem), and the relationship between tasks and actions. It may be possible to implement a temporal-inference machine based on this logic, which keeps track of several “maps” of a time line, one per possible history.

A Temporal Logic for Reasoning about Processes and Plans.

An iterative boosting-based ensemble for streaming data classification

Using Bayesian networks with rule extraction to infer the risk of weed infestation in a corn-crop

This paper proposes a computational modeling for image filtering processes based on the Cartesian Genetic Programming CGP methodology, suitable for hardware devices. A computational system named ALIF-CGP Automatic Learning of Image Filters Using Cartesian Genetic Programming was designed as a simulator for automatically constructing a sequence of operators, mainly morphological and logical, which can filter a particular shape of image. ALIF-CGP is a convenient option for executing the non-trivial task, usually manually done by human experts, of selecting the sequence of nonlinear operators to be used in morphological filters. ALIF-CGP has already a built-in pool of morphological and logical operators, which can be used by default. The user, however, has the flexibility of choosing only those operators which are of interest or then, conveniently introduce new ones. The system expects as input a pair of images input-target. The flexibility given by the CGP-based computational modeling used by ALIF-CGP as well as its efficiency and satisfactory results, obtained in various image processing case studies, recommend its use when developing a hardware implementation for the purposes of image filtering. A few case studies using ALIF-CGP are presented and comparatively analyzed in relation to previous results available in the literature.

Automatic learning of image filters using Cartesian genetic programming

Using a modified genetic algorithm to minimize the production costs for slabs of precast prestressed concrete joists

This paper proposes a feature weighting method based on X2 statistical test, to be used in conjunction with a k-NN classifier. Results of empirical experiments conducted using data from several knowledge domains are presented and discussed. Forty four out of forty five conducted experiments favoured the feature weighted approach and are empirical evidence that the proposed weighting process based on X2 is a good weighting strategy

http://vigir.missouri.edu/~gdesouza/Research/Conference_CDs/IEEE_SSCI_2007/Foundations%20of%20CI%20-%20FOCI%202007/data/papers/FOCI/S001P073.pdf

Maria do Carmo Nicoletti

Papers

An iterative boosting-based ensemble for streaming data classification

Using Bayesian networks with rule extraction to infer the risk of weed infestation in a corn-crop

Automatic learning of image filters using Cartesian genetic programming

Using a modified genetic algorithm to minimize the production costs for slabs of precast prestressed concrete joists

Feature-weighted k-Nearest Neighbor Classifier