Why Machine Learning

• Recent progress in algorithms and theory
• Growing flood of online data
• Computational power is available
• Budding industry

Three niches for machine learning:

• Data mining : using historical data to improve decisions
  • medical records $\rightarrow$ medical knowledge
• Software applications we can't program by hand
  • autonomous driving
  • speech recognition
• Self customizing programs
  • Newsreader that learns user interests