Machine Learning Shaping the New World of Cognitive Computing Posted on : Dec 01 - 2015

The explosion of data from social media, video, audio, wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT), has innovators focused on new ways to make data more meaningful and valuable.

Machine learning is helping, with software engineers continually creating and improving algorithms that automatically analyze data to identify patterns and predict outcomes.

Machine learning involves studying 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.”

Herain Oberoi, director of product management at Microsoft, described an existing use case where an organization is studying the problem of customer churn by doing an in-depth analysis based on Web logs and click streams.  View more