In this keynote I will give you a business understanding of ML by going through key concepts and concrete use cases that illustrate its possibilities. I'll present new technology that makes ML more accessible, and I'll explain in simple terms the limitations to what can be achieved. Finally, I'll discuss pragmatic considerations of real-world applications and I'll give a sneak peak at the Machine Learning Canvas — a framework for describing a predictive system that uses ML to provide value to its end user.

1. @louisdorard
#papisconnect

3. PredictiveAPIs

5. Student Researcher Data Scientist Developer Non-technical

9. Machine Learning
Use cases
Limitations
Predictive APIs
Does it work?
Case study
ML Canvas

10. –Mike Gualtieri, Principal Analyst at Forrester
“Predictive apps are
the next big thing
in app development.”

11. –Waqar Hasan, VISA
“Predictive is the ‘killer app’ for big
data.”

12. 1. Machine Learning
2. Data

13. BUT

14. –McKinsey & Co. (2011)
“A significant constraint on
realizing value from big data will
be a shortage of talent,
particularly of people with deep
expertise in statistics and machine
learning.”

15. Demystifying
Machine Learning

17. “Which type of email is this?
— Spam/Ham”

18. “Which type of email is this?
— Spam/Ham”
Classification

19. I
O
“Which type of email is this?
— Spam/Ham”

20. ??

22. “How much is this house worth?
— X $”
-> Regression

23. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
3 1 1012 1951 house
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
3 2 1599 1964 house
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
4 2001 house 855,000
3 2.5 1472 2005 house
4 3.5 1714 2005 townhouse
2 2 1113 1999 condo
1 769 1999 condo 315,000

24. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
3 1 1012 1951 house
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
3 2 1599 1964 house
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
4 2001 house 855,000
3 2.5 1472 2005 house
4 3.5 1714 2005 townhouse
2 2 1113 1999 condo
1 769 1999 condo 315,000

26. ML is a set of AI techniques where
“intelligence” is built by referring to
examples

28. Use cases

29. • Real-estate
• Spam
• Priority inbox
• Crowd prediction
property price
email spam indicator
email importance indicator
location & context #people
Zillow
Gmail
Gmail
Tranquilien

30. I. Get more customers
• Reduce churn
• Score leads
• Optimize campaigns
customer churn indicator
customer revenue
customer & campaign interest indicator

31. II. Serve customers better
• Cross-sell
• Increase engagement
• Optimize pricing
customer & product purchase indicator
user & item interest indicator
product & price #sales

32. III. Serve customers more efficiently
• Predict demand
• Automate tasks
• Use predictive enterprise apps
context demand
credit application repayment indicator

33. Predictive enterprise apps
• Priority filtering
• Message routing
• Auto-configuration
message priority indicator
request employee
user & actions settings
RULES

34. –Katherine Barr, Partner at VC-firm MDV
"Pairing human workers with
machine learning and automation
will transform knowledge work
and unleash new levels of human
productivity and creativity."

35. Limitations

40. Need examples of inputs AND outputs

42. What if not enough data points?

44. What if similar inputs have dissimilar outputs?

46. Bedrooms Bathrooms Price ($)
3 2 500,000
3 2 800,000
1 1 300,000
1 1 800,000

47. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Price ($)
3 2 800 1950 500,000
3 2 1000 1950 800,000
1 1 500 1950 300,000
1 1 500 2014 800,000

48. –@louisdorard
“A model can only be as good as
the data it was given to train on”

49. Predictive APIs:
ML for all

51. HTML / CSS / JavaScript

52. HTML / CSS / JavaScript

53. squarespace.com

56. The two phases of machine learning:
• TRAIN a model
• PREDICT with a model

57. The two methods of predictive APIs:
• TRAIN a model
• PREDICT with a model

58. The two methods of predictive APIs:
• model = create_model(dataset)
• predicted_output =
create_prediction(model, new_input)

59. The two methods of predictive APIs:
• model = create_model(‘training.csv’)
• predicted_output =
create_prediction(model, new_input)

62. “Is this email important?
— Yes/No”

63. “Is this customer going to leave next month?
— Yes/No”

64. “What is the sentiment of this tweet?
— Positive/Neutral/Negative”

65. The two phases of machine learning:
• TRAIN a model
• PREDICT with a model

66. The two phases of machine learning:
• TRAIN a model
• PREDICT with an already existing model

67. “Is this email spam?
— Yes/No”

68. Does it work?
How well

69. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
3 1 1012 1951 house
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
3 2 1599 1964 house
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
4 2001 house 855,000
3 2.5 1472 2005 house
4 3.5 1714 2005 townhouse
2 2 1113 1999 condo
1 769 1999 condo 315,000

70. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
3 1 1012 1951 house
3 2 1599 1964 house
3 2.5 1472 2005 house
4 3.5 1714 2005 townhouse
2 2 1113 1999 condo

71. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000

72. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000

73. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000
Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000

74. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($) Price ($)
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000 790,000
4 2001 house 855,000 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000 122,000

75. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($) Price ($)
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000

76. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($) Price ($)
4 2 1574 1964 house 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 790,000
4 2001 house 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 122,000

77. Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($)
2 1.5 968 1976 townhouse 447,000
3 1 860 1950 house 565,000
1 769 1999 condo 315,000
4 1315 1950 house 648,000
Bedrooms Bathrooms Surface (foot²) Year built Type Price ($) Price ($)
4 2 1574 1964 house 818,000 835,000
3 2 987 1951 townhouse 800,000 790,000
4 2001 house 915,000 855,000
1 1 530 2007 condo 100,000 122,000

78. Price ($) Price ($)
818,000 835,000
800,000 790,000
915,000 855,000
100,000 122,000

79. Need real-time machine learning?

80. The two phases of machine learning:
• TRAIN a model
• PREDICT with a model

81. • Training time
• Prediction time
• Accuracy

82. Case study:
churn analysis

83. • Who: SaaS company selling monthly subscription
• Question asked:“Is this customer going to leave
within 1 month?”
• Input: customer
• Output: no-churn (negative) or churn (positive)
• Data collection: history up until 1 month ago
• Baseline: if no usage for more than 15 days then
churn

84. Learning: OK
but
• How to represent customers?
• What to do after predicting churn?

85. Customer representation:
• basic info (age, income, etc.)
• usage of service (# times used app, avg time spent,
features used, etc.)
• interactions with customer support (how many,
topics of questions, satisfaction ratings)

86. Taking action to prevent churn:
• contact customers (in which order?)
• switch to different plan
• give special offer
• no action?

87. Measuring accuracy:
• #TP (we predict customer churns and he does)
• #FP (we predict customer churns but he doesn’t)
• #FN (we predict customer doesn’t churn but he does)
• Compare to baseline

88. Estimating Return On Investment:
• Taking action for #TP and #FP customers has a cost
• We earn #TP * success rate * revenue /cust. /month
• Compare to baseline

89. Machine Learning
Canvas

91. PREDICTIONS OBJECTIVES DATA
Context
Who will use the predictive system / who will be
affected by it? Provide some background.
Value Proposition
What are we trying to do? E.g. spend less time on
X, increase Y...
Data Sources
Where do/can we get data from? (internal
database, 3rd party API, etc.)
Problem
Question to predict answers to (in plain English)
Input (i.e. question "parameter")
Possible outputs (i.e. "answers")
Type of problem (e.g. classification, regression,
recommendation...)
Baseline
What is an alternative way of making predictions
(e.g. manual rules based on feature values)?
Performance evaluation
Domain-specific / bottom-line metrics for
monitoring performance in production
Prediction accuracy metrics (e.g. MSE if
regression; % accuracy, #FP for classification)
Offline performance evaluation method (e.g.
cross-validation or simple training/test split)
Dataset
How do we collect data (inputs and outputs)?
How many data points?
Features
Used to represent inputs and extracted from
data sources above. Group by types and
mention key features if too many to list all.
Using predictions
When do we make predictions and how many?
What is the time constraint for making those predictions?
How do we use predictions and confidence values?
Learning predictive models
When do we create/update models? With which data / how much?
What is the time constraint for creating a model?
Criteria for deploying model (e.g. minimum performance value — absolute,
relative to baseline or to previous model)
IDEASPECSDEPLOYMENT

92. BACKGROUND
ENGINE SPECS
INTEGRATION

93. PREDICTIONS OBJECTIVES DATA
BACKGROUND
ENGINE SPECS
INTEGRATION

94. PREDICTIONS OBJECTIVES DATA
BACKGROUND End-user Value prop Sources
ENGINE SPECS ML problem Perf eval Preparation
INTEGRATION Using pred Learning modelINTEGRATION Using pred Learning model

95. Why fill in ML canvas?
• Target the right problem for your company
• Choose right algorithm, infrastructure, or ML
solution
• Guide project management
• Improve team communication

96. machinelearningcanvas.com

97. Recap

98. • Need examples of inputs AND outputs
• Need enough examples

99. • ML to create value from data
• 2 phases: TRAIN and PREDICT
• Predictive APIs make it more accessible
• Good data is essential
• What do we do with predictions?
• Measure performance with accuracy, time and
bottom-line
• Also: deploy, maintain, improve…

101. louisdorard.com