learning to learn: on supervised and unsupervised learning in machine learning with Python

initially, i just planned on posting a “short” “blurb” on my blog and GitHub Python page as there seemed to me to be a “virtual triangle” among machine learning, statistics, and data visualisation. i’m still likely to make a brief GitHub “file” but upon serious reflection this post may not be a “cursory” post.

it took me awhile to come up with this post because i was partly busy with an online machine learning course, and, frankly, didn’t know what to write – and i’m finding it difficult to figure out how to do it – it didn’t help that there was a “time-consuming” upgrade of the Jupyter notebook environment that i use to store my ipynb files online.

my last experience started me thinking on how i learn- i still need to reflect more on it. i’ve done “ok” academically but i’ve discovered i can understand better if “alternatives” are provided for me to choose from. programming is, essentially, divergent: that is, sometimes there is more than a single way to arrive at an “acceptable solution”. why can’t “formal” education be that way? i know that the human brain can be easily overloaded by many things but perhaps offering a few choices might result in more students understanding. i’m realistic and pragmatic enough to understand that most teachers are overworked (at least those that care about the development of others) and that maybe there needs to be a more “active” open-source community like coding: sharing can make lighter work.

here is my initial attempt at my updated repository:

https://github.com/LinsAbadia/Python/blob/master/Machine%20Learning/Learning.ipynb

think twice: on the expression “you’ve got another thing coming.”

apparently, i was wrong: both think and thing are acceptable. like so many others, i had been inadvertently “influenced” by the Judas Priest lyrics.

i discovered my mistake when i “played” commonly confused words : https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-games/more-confusing

this had caused me to do a bit of digging and i stumbled upon this article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/nov/18/mind-your-language-another-think

if mondegreens are often misheard lyrics, what do call “misinterpreted” language from a song?

pound for pound: on why we use lbs. for pounds

although we use the metric system in Australia, i still mainly use the English (or Imperial, pick your poison) equivalents for height and weight. maybe IMHO it makes more “sense”, maybe it’s just a force of habit (as we use a “mixed” version in the Philippines. strangely, we’ve not committed to one nor the other), or maybe some kind of combination of these.

apparently, lb is short for the Latin libra which roughly translates to “pound weight” – this etymology is also the root of the currency.

i partly recall the jingle to fully “convert” the population to metric that’s why i remember these ratios: cm = in * 2.54; lbs = kg * 2.2…