Machine Learning with R

Choosing a machine learning algorithm

The process of choosing a machine learning algorithm involves matching the characteristics of the data to be learned to the biases of the available approaches. Since the choice of a machine learning algorithm is largely dependent upon the type of data you are analyzing and the proposed task at hand, it is often helpful to be thinking about this process while you are gathering, exploring, and cleaning your data.

Tip

It may be tempting to learn a couple of machine learning techniques and apply them to everything, but resist this temptation. No machine learning approach is best for every circumstance. This fact is described by the No Free Lunch theorem, introduced by David Wolpert in 1996. For more information, ...