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Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by PaulHoule on Sunday May 22, 2011 @09:06AM (#2573181)
That tree's a good example of how not to do it.

For one thing, it's representing something that's not really a tree. "Support Vector Machine" and "Neural Networks" appear more than once as leaf nodes. Like any Chinese Encyclopedia classifications they often succumb to the temptation to add nodes that say "Other" to keep the length of the branches constant. (They could probably think of some name for what neural nets and the SVM have in common -- they've got all day to think about this stuff because they get paid to teach and to do research, it's not like they are harried practitioners.)

At some point I quit distinguishing regression and classification. There was a time when I knew some tricks for classification and regression seemed mysterious. Once I got over my mental block it seemed pretty obvious that much of my box of tricks worked for regression too.

Another issue is that it's not a good graphic for the web. You could probably print this out and read it but you can't take it in at glance on the web which destroys the purpose of it being an infographic

Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by davidkellis on Sunday May 22, 2011 @10:19AM (#2573291)
You probably have more background in data mining that the rest of us. For those of us with limited or no exposure to data mining techniques, I think the graphic gives me some background about each technique that I otherwise wouldn't have had. At a glance, I understood that there are two types of hierarchical clustering method - agglomerative and divisive. That is a small amount of new knowledge, but it's more than I could have gleaned from a glance at a block of text. I don't think the graphic is without merit.
Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by dpatru on Sunday May 22, 2011 @09:30AM (#2573211)
The graphic does what it's intended to do: give a high-level overview of machine learning concepts and techniques. Even if not perfect, it's a lot better than a block of text.
Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by PaulHoule on Sunday May 22, 2011 @10:05AM (#2573265)
it still isn't the way i'd do it. the sheer number of different methods is intimidating -- there are a lot of commonalities of the methods that aren't depicted.

if you wanted to make things clear you're better off picking ONE problem and ONE method applied to the problem. the real challenges in understanding ML or DM are pretty much the same with all methods.

a graphic like that creates the illusion that it's transfered some knowledge when really it hasn't. that's why infographics are dangerous. if HN was my site i'd have it reject any article that has an image that's > 800 pixels high in it.

Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by jimbokun on Sunday May 22, 2011 @09:50PM (#2574768)
"it still isn't the way i'd do it."

I look forward to your attempt!

Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by sammyo on Sunday May 22, 2011 @07:35PM (#2574564)
It just helped me a lot. Last night I'd drilled down reading about Support Vector machines and seeing that chart put a bunch of topics in focus.
Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by dvse on Sunday May 22, 2011 @10:20AM (#2573295)
The only thing this graphic does is that it generates confusion and reinforces misconceptions. A tree diagram is completely inadequate for this task - they say that mathematics is about "analogies between analogies" for a reason.
Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by plainOldText on Sunday May 22, 2011 @01:38PM (#2573726)
I also disagree with you. I consider the tree extremely easy to follow even though is not perfect. I guess some people use visualization more than others, which is completely fine.
Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by sesqu on Monday May 23, 2011 @10:35AM (#2576035)
I also wouldn't construct the hierarchy in this way.

I would put the statistics under modelling or summatory analysis, not under exploratory analysis. I wouldn't divide methods by sufficient descriptive statistics - I'd divide them by domain and loss function. I would name an artificial neural network.

Or perhaps I would arrange them by computational complexity.

That said, this is a good summary in that it's an overview, and overviews are always helpful.

Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by gburt on Sunday May 22, 2011 @01:01PM (#2573648)
Can you point us to anything that you would see as a good introduction to the prediction side of machine learning?

The "explaining the past" (and I suppose the regression) section is covered well by most universities statistics departments, but the "predicting the future" stuff is usually limited to one or two Artificial Intelligence classes in the computer science faculty.

Re:An Introduction to Data Mining by ableal on Monday May 23, 2011 @12:06AM (#2574940)
> Like any Chinese Encyclopedia classifications

As in "those that belong to the Emperor", etc., as Borges put it ( http://www.multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html )

(I suppose, but I do have a pro-Borges bias ;-)