An introduction to deep learning

In the last couple of posts, we’ve learned about various aspects of Machine Learning. Now, we will focus on other aspects of Machine Learning: Deep Learning. In this post, I will give an introduction to deep learning. Over the last couple of years, this was the hype around AI. But what is so exciting about Deep Learning? First, let’s have a look at the concepts of Deep Learning.

A brief introduction to Deep Learning

Basically, Deep Learning should function similar to the human brain. Everything is built around Neurons, which work in networks (neural networks). The smallest element in a neural network is the neuron, which takes an input parameter and creates an output parameter, based on the bias and weight it has. The following image shows the Neuron in Deep Learning:

Next, there are Layers in the Network, which consists of several Neurons. Each Layer has some transformations, that will eventually lead to an end result. Each Layer will get much closer to the target result. If your Deep Learning model built to recognise hand writing, the first layer would probably recognise gray-scales, the second layer a connection between different pixels, the third layer would recognise simple figures and the fourth layer would recognise the letter. The following image shows a typical neural net:

A typical workflow in a neural net calculation for image recognition could look like this:

• All images are split into batches
• Each batch is sent to the GPU for calculation
• The model starts the analysis with random weights
• A cost function gets specified, that compares the results with the truth
• Back propagation of the result happens
• Once a model calculation is finished, the result is merged and returned

How is it different to Machine Learning?

Although Deep Learning is often considered to be a “subset” of Machine Learning, it is quite different. For different aspects, Deep Learning often achieves better results than “traditional” machine learning models. The following table should provide an overview of these differences:

This is only the basic overview of Deep Learning. Deep Learning knows several different methods. In the next tutorial, we will have a look at different interpretations of Deep Learning.

This tutorial is part of the Machine Learning Tutorial. You can learn more about Machine Learning by going through this tutorial. On Cloudvane, there are many more tutorials about (Big) Data, Data Science and alike, read about them in the Big Data Tutorials here. If you look for great datasets to play with, I would recommend you Kaggle.