When it comes to machine learning for entrepreneurs, perhaps one of the friendliest, easy-to-understand introductions comes from a practical guide released by ThinkWithGoogle.
The guide is not really an article or text-oriented content page that you’d come to expect from most web pages.
Instead, it’s a visually-oriented, semi-interactive series of mobile-friendly slides.
A few of the slides are interactive: they ask you to play a counting or puzzle-solving game.
And when you see the answer, you’re taught a mini-lesson about machine learning.
As one progresses through the slides, you learn interesting facts about machine learning, specifically as it pertains to businesses.
There are 3 things to keep in mind here (and do go through Google’s introduction to learn more):
Machine Learning Isn’t Necessarily Mysterious (Though It Can Appear That Way)
Machines, algorithms, and computers do a lot of the same things that you consciously do, except faster, with more accuracy, and to a greater level of complexity.
You’d also look like a whiz if you could solve complex visual puzzles in a fraction of a second. Yes, you can probably–eventually–solve complex visual problems, but can you do so as fast as a machine?
You May Have to Work With a Data Scientist to Establish Your Machine Learning Goal
Machine learning is exactly that–the ‘machine’ has to be fed a lot of data so that it can learn about your business. This data can come in the form of statistics, population growth, sea levels, true vs. official inflation…whichever data is relevant to you.
“An Algorithm Is Only As Good As Its Data”
I pulled this one from one of the slides, and it’s sort of a continuation of what I was saying earlier: you not only need good data, but it has to be accurate data…or, at least within a certain margin of error.
Machine learning for entrepreneurs, teams, and businesses can be quite an undertaking, but with the right skill set, talents, and tools, it can be an endeavor that can give you the leading edge.
Source: Google Analytics Twitter channel