Teaching machine learning: AI vs ML fundamentals

I'm teaching a machine learning class this week. One of my favorite parts of teaching is helping technical folks not just learn the concepts, but also see how they apply directly to their own domains. Now, I often get asked: “Can’t AI just replace ML?” The honest answer: sometimes. But it’s usually more expensive, slower, and often delivers worse performance. “Can’t AI just solve ML problems for me?” Again, sometimes. But without an understanding of the fundamentals, you can’t sanity-check the output. And trust me, AI goes off the rails more often than you’d think. (Ask me how I know…) Here's a drawing I made during my course yesterday to help students remember the difference between precision and recall. What do you think of it? (As always, follow me for more insights on Python, tabular data science, and AI applications. And if your team needs help with these tools, reach out.)

  • text, whiteboard
Jayita Bhattacharyya🗣️🎤

Data Scientist || Tech Speaker || Hackathon Wizard || MLE

4w

🐍 Matt Harrison very interesting illustration Would love to join one of your classes

Like
Reply
Ayla N.

Researcher | Software Developer | Content Creator | Immunologist | Freelancer

3w

🐍 Matt Harrison thank you for sharing and giving back to the Python community!

Like
Reply
Stephen Pittard

Bioinformatics and Music Tech

4w

The expression I like to use is Recall is the friend who always has your back, while Precision is the friend who keeps you honest...Your art work is better than mine!

I understand this was a cohort of programmers for trauma-room software.

Mauricio Claudio MPA MS

Democratic Governance Executive & Data Scientist ★ Policy & Institutional Reform ★ Data Analytics, ML & Statistics ★ CEO, Team Leader & Advisor ★ Crisis Management ★ Global Consulting ★ R/Python/SQL ★ 4 languages

3w

The question is not whether tool X can stand in for tool Y. The question, the required skill is knowing whether and when tool X can stand in for tool Y, and whether you are able to feed tool X with the right inputs to produce meaningful output.

See more comments

To view or add a comment, sign in

Explore content categories