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

Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

/pdf/climate-change-2007-the-physical-science-basis-1x93ttz9jt.pdf

Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

An overview of the self-organizing map algorithm, on which the papers in this issue are based, is presented in this article.

The Self-Organizing Map

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) constitute a class of flexible nonlinear models designed to mimic biological neural systems. In this entry, we introduce ANN using familiar econometric terminology and provide an overview of ANN modeling approach and its implementation methods. † Correspondence: Chung-Ming Kuan, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan; ckuan@econ.sinica.edu.tw. †† I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editor, Professor Steven Durlauf, for his patience and constructive comments on early drafts of this entry. I also thank Shih-Hsun Hsu and Yu-Lieh Huang for very helpful suggestions. The remaining errors are all mine.

Artificial neural networks

Applications of hybrid wavelet–Artificial Intelligence models in hydrology: A review

Forecasts of future events are required in many activities associated with planning and operation of the components of a water resources system. For the hydrologic component, there is a need for both short term and long term forecasts of streamflow events in order to optimize the system or to plan for future expansion or reduction. This paper presents a comparison of different artificial neural networks (ANNs) algorithms for short term daily streamflow forecasting. Four different ANN algorithms, namely, backpropagation, conjugate gradient, cascade correlation, and Levenberg–Marquardt are applied to continuous streamflow data of the North Platte River in the United States. The models are verified with untrained data. The results from the different algorithms are compared with each other. The correlation analysis was used in the study and found to be useful for determining appropriate input vectors to the ANNs.

Streamflow Forecasting Using Different Artificial Neural Network Algorithms

The abilities of neuro-fuzzy (NF) and neural network (NN) approaches to model the streamflow–suspended sediment relationship are investigated. The NF and NN models are established for estimating current suspended sediment values using the streamflow and antecedent sediment data. The sediment rating curve and multi-linear regression are also applied to the same data. Statistic measures were used to evaluate the performance of the models. The daily streamflow and suspended sediment data for two stations—Quebrada Blanca station and Rio Valenciano station—operated by the US Geological Survey were used as case studies. Based on comparison of the results, it is found that the NF model gives better estimates than the other techniques.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1623/hysj.2005.50.4.683

Suspended sediment estimation using neuro-fuzzy and neural network approaches/Estimation des matières en suspension par des approches neurofloues et à base de réseau de neurones

This paper demonstrates the application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in predicting mean monthly streamflow. The estimation of flow is very important for reservoir operation policy; therefore, in this study, based on the monthly flow data obtained from the Turkey State of Water Works, ANNs have been used to predict river flow. Autoregressive (AR) models have also been applied to the same data. The performance of the neural network is compared with that of the statistical method.

Ozgur Kisi

Papers

Applications of hybrid wavelet–Artificial Intelligence models in hydrology: A review

Streamflow Forecasting Using Different Artificial Neural Network Algorithms

Suspended sediment estimation using neuro-fuzzy and neural network approaches/Estimation des matières en suspension par des approches neurofloues et à base de réseau de neurones

River Flow Modeling Using Artificial Neural Networks

Two hybrid Artificial Intelligence approaches for modeling rainfall–runoff process