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10 No-Nonsense Machine Learning Tips for Beginners (Using Real-World Datasets)
Data Analysis   Data Science   Data Visualization   Latest   Machine Learning

10 No-Nonsense Machine Learning Tips for Beginners (Using Real-World Datasets)

Mukundan Sankar
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December 18, 2024
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Last Updated on December 19, 2024 by Editorial Team

Author(s): Mukundan Sankar

Originally published on Towards AI.

Stop Overthinking and Start Building Models with Real-World Datasets

This member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium.

Photo by Mahdis Mousavi on Unsplash

Do you want to get into machine learning? Good. You’re in for a ride. I have been in the Data field for over 8 years, and Machine Learning is what got me interested then, so I am writing about this! More about me here.

But here’s the truth: Most beginners get lost in the noise. They chase the hype — Neural Networks, Transformers, Deep Learning, and, who can forget — AI — and fall flat. The secret? Start simple, experiment, and get your hands dirty. You’ll learn faster than any tutorial can teach you.

These 10 tips cut the fluff. They focus on doing, not just theorizing. And to make it practical, I’ll show you how to use real-world datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository to build and train your first models.

Let’s get started.

Forget deep learning for now. It’s crucial to start with small, simple models. You're not ready for neural networks if you can’t explain Linear Regression or Decision Trees. These simple models work wonders for small datasets and lay a solid foundation for understanding the basics.

We’re using the Boston Housing Dataset. The goal?… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor.

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//Articles to skip let articleIdsToSkip = ['post-2651', 'post-3414', 'post-3540']; //keyword with its related achortag is recieved here along with article id function searchAndReplace(keyword, anchorTag, articleId) { //selects the h3 h4 and p tags that are inside of the article let content = document.querySelector(`#${articleId} .entry-content`); //replaces the "linktext" in achor tag with the keyword that will be searched and replaced let newLink = anchorTag.replace('linktext', keyword); //regular expression to search keyword var re = new RegExp('(' + keyword + ')', 'g'); //this replaces the keywords in h3 h4 and p tags content with achor tag content.innerHTML = content.innerHTML.replace(re, newLink); } function articleFilter(keyword, anchorTag) { //gets all the articles var articles = document.querySelectorAll('article'); //if its zero or less then there are no articles if (articles.length > 0) { for (let x = 0; x < articles.length; x++) { //articles to skip is an array in which there are ids of articles which should not get effected //if the current article's id is also in that array then do not call search and replace with its data if (!articleIdsToSkip.includes(articles[x].id)) { //search and replace is called on articles which should get effected searchAndReplace(keyword, anchorTag, articles[x].id, key); 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