Visualizing machine learning

In the "scatterplot matrix" visualization, I am having trouble understanding what the X & Y axes are. Please explain the triangle of scatterplots being formed using the 7 dimensions?

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

I'm not the OP.

To find the X dimension for one of the 7 scatterplots in that triangle thing put your mouse on the scatterplot you want and move down till you hit some text, that's the X axis. The Y axis is to the left.

tel2• 11 years ago

They're just trying to illustrate 7 dimensional data. There are 67 2-dimensional comparisons, scatterplots, 67/2 if you eliminate ones made redundant by symmetry, 6*7/2+7 if you add 1-dimensional histograms for "self comparisons".

So a scatterplot matrix, a splom, displays those 21 scatterplots in a meaningful way. Each "row" and "column" of scatterplots compares a single dimension against all of the others.

You usually look at a thing like this to see if you'll get lucky and find a good "orthogonal" comparator—in other words, that just two normal, human-interpretable dimensions already form a good splitting plane like "elevation cross $/sq-ft" does in the running example.

codeisawesome2• 11 years ago

I'm finding my mind blown with this novel way of using a single point in space to represent both X & Y axes based on context.

Thanks for the explanation!

alexchamberlain• 11 years ago

Brilliant article and fantastic intro, though I think some key concepts aren't discussed at all, such as bias and variance. Looking forward to future articles.

anacleto• 11 years ago

Great piece & truly awesome visualization.

I would add, as useful resource, this full course on Amazon Machine Learning: https://cloudacademy.com/amazon-web-services/courses/amazon-...

thom• 11 years ago

I realise this is probably the way the web is going, but I personally really struggle with this sort of presentation. The content is great, it looks lovely, the actual infographics are very clear, and unlike lots of sites, it actually scrolls very, very smoothly.

But it makes it _so_ hard to bookmark something in your mind, or to skip back to something, or to view an infographic in the context of the next or previous paragraph, or any number of things that have been easy to do with text and images for thousands of years. Trying to change the text size in the hope that you can just view more text breaks everything.

I find it really affects my overall comprehension of a piece, and the speed with which I can get through it. Given the universally positive comments elsewhere, I assume my brain is just wired for the dark ages.

profinger• 11 years ago

Agreed 100%. I personally hate this effect everywhere that it's implemented. This usage is ok relative to most but it's still awful. Why can't we just get a nice post with some pictures along the side? Everything doesn't have to be fancy and difficult to register.

hcarvalhoalves• 11 years ago

This "reads" more like a video, rather than a traditional book with graphics. I wonder what a good compromise would look like.

carapace• 11 years ago

I agree with you, despite having enjoyed that presentation very much.

Allow me to define "web page" as an HTML document optionally enhanced with CSS and JS and "web presentation" as an experience delivered over the web but which fundamentally cannot be rendered as a static document.

"No, I can't explain the dance to you; If I could say it I wouldn't have to dance it." ~Isadora Duncan

As much as I like and enjoy well-made "web presentations" I feel wary of the high praise that doesn't take into account the points you raise above. These things can get away from people. Look how easily light-grey body text swept through the web.

As cool as this is, it's still a far cry from e.g. Alan Kay's "active documents" and it's not really a "web site" (IMO).

GolfJimB• 11 years ago

Absolutely love this! Someone please link a tutorial on how to do these kinda of paralax/svg graphics, my site NEEDS this!

tommyd• 11 years ago

Beautiful - in my opinion, a great example of fancy interactive graphics enhancing both the appearance and the ease of understanding an article. Great work!

fizzbatter• 11 years ago

Very very cool!

tel2• 11 years ago

Pretty visualizations... but many of the animations kill this for me. Some are great, animating the decision-tree-pachinko machine for training/CV data sets is fantastic... but all the swooping and building just made me want to skip half of the charts entirely.

kwhitefoot• 11 years ago

Well I didn't learn anything I didn't already know but It was fun to read and I think that for someone completely new to the field it would act as a good introduction to the idea of decision trees.

I think the title promises too much though (I realize that it is probably meant as an overall title for series of posts). There is no machine learning in this presentation, no algorithms for discovering the splits are described so the machine doesn't learn anything.

Visualizing machine learning

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