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DataSets and Machine Learning
One of the hardests problems to solve in deep learning has nothing to do with neural nets: it’s the problem of getting the right data in the right format.
Deep learning, and machine learning more generally, needs a good training set to work properly. Collecting and constructing the training set – a sizable body of known data – takes time and domain-specific knowledge of where and how to gather relevant information. The training set acts as the benchmark against which deep-learning nets are trained. That is what they learn to reconstruct before they’re unleashed on data they haven’t seen before.
At this stage, knowledgeable humans need to find the right raw data and transform it into a numerical representation that the deep-learning algorithm can understand, a vector. Building a training set is, in a sense, pre-pre-training.
Training sets that require much time or expertise can serve as a proprietary edge in the world of data science and problem solving. The nature of the expertise is largely in telling your algorithm what matters to you by selecting what goes into the training set.
It involves telling a story – through the initial data you select – that will guide your deep-learning nets as they extrapolate the significant features, both in the training set and in the raw data they’ve been created to study.
To create a useful training set, you have to understand the problem you’re solving; i.e. what you want your deep-learning nets to pay attention to.
The Two Datasets of Machine Learning
Machine learning typically works with three data sets: training, dev and test. All three should randomly sample a larger body of data.
The first set you use is the training set, the largest of the three. Running a training set through a neural network teaches the net how to weigh different features, assigning them coefficients according to their likelihood of minimizing errors in your results.
Those coefficients, also known as metadata, will be contained in vectors, one for each each layer of your net. They are the most important results you will obtain from training a neural network.
The second set is your test set. It functions as a seal of approval, and you don’t use it until the end. After you’ve trained and optimized your data, you test your neural net against this final random sampling. The results it produces should validate that your net accurately recognizes images, or recognizes them at least [x] percentage of them.
If you don’t get accurate predictions, go back to the training set, look at the hyperparameters you used to tune the network, as well as the quality of your data and look at your pre-processing techniques.
Now that you have the overview, we’ll show you how to create custom datasets.
Various repositories of open data sets that may be useful in training neural networks are available through the link.
Public Datasets for Machine Learning
- UCI Machine Learning Repository Collection of benchmark datasets for regression and classification tasks
- UCI KDD Archive Extended version of UCI datasets
- DELVE datasets Platform for comparative assessment of regression and classification tasks
- Nonlinear dimensinality reduction
- DMOZ open directory collection of links for different datasets
- Google directory collection of links for different datasets
- ChemDB chemical data that can be used as datasets for machine learning
- Golem dataset trying to learn rules for prediction