Machine Learning

             Advancements in technology are always beneficial because they make the people’s lives more simple. This concept of machine learning was something researchers hoped would do just that; and indeed it has. We have advanced this concept of machine learning to concrete programs that solve difficult problems and give shortcuts during our daily lives. Though machine learning might not seem so crucial for our day to day lives, it is in fact present in more places than one would think.

             Machine learning’s benefits are all over the internet. While surfing the web many people have come across search engines and sites that adjust their search results to a user’s interests. These sites or engines find patterns in the searches done by a user. Once these patterns and tendencies are learned by the site or engine they can then narrow down searches to fit a user’s interests and needs. If you check your e-mail regularly machine learning is what helps keep useless, bothersome spam e-mails in your spam folders and out of the inbox. This benefit is hard to see because if the program is working correctly you are hopefully not seeing these e-mails but nonetheless, it is there (Langford, 2010). They can also learn to anticipate a user’s searches as well. Some examples of this are stumbleupon.com and Google.

             Machine learning is not only beneficial to the internet world but to the business world as well. Many machine learning programs can solve difficult problems or find patterns, tendencies or consistencies in small to large amounts of data. For example, a hospital’s medical records and history can now be used as medical knowledge. This information can be used as reference points for a machine learning program trying to diagnose a future patient’s symptoms.