Machine Learning Shaping the New World of Cognitive Computing Posted on : Nov 30 - 2015

The advent of the big data era, with the explosion of data from a variety of sources such as social media, video, audio, wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT), has led innovators to look for new ways to handle and process all of that data to make it more meaningful and to derive insights from it.

Machine learning is one of a number of technologies being adapted to help make sense of all this new data being generated. Machine learning, as defined by Mike Gualtieri, principal analyst at Forrester Research, is a field of computer science where software engineers continually create and improve algorithms that automatically analyze data to identify patterns or predict outcomes.

In fact machine learning involves the study of computer algorithms that provide computer programs with the ability to learn, discover, predict and improve automatically using large amounts of data without explicit programming, said Dave Schubmehl, research director for Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC.

“Machine learning starts with data—the more you have, the better your results are likely to be,” said David Chappell, in a white paper on Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning solution. “Because we live in the big data era, machine learning has become much more popular in the last few years. Having lots of data to work with in many different areas lets the techniques of machine learning be applied to a broader set of problems. Since the process starts with data, choosing the right data to work with is critically important.” View more