PyBrain -- the Python Machine Learning Library

by jnaut • 17 years ago

39 11 17 years ago

hack_edu2• 17 years ago

This isn't the first time I've seen 'learning,' 'cognitive,' or 'brain' Python libraries come up in on HN. I'm always interested, but can never glean enough from them to understand what to use them for.

Can anyone offer anecdotal experience your machine learning project?

pavs• 17 years ago

skynet? hello?

jnaut5• 17 years ago

I can see in your profile "about:librarian". Hence I am a bit confused as to why you don't know where to use ML, but still, I will go ahead and just scratch the surface for you. Since listing all the fields where ML is/can-be used will require a book by itself. :-)

Well I shall limit my answer to two simple examples from the web and in the vicinity of your profile, so that you find it more interesting.

Did you know that ML is one of the key components of Google(1) search, yes, the one that you might be using day in and day out.

Did you know that all the sites offering you personalized recommendations like "people who bought this book also liked this book", use ML.

Why don't you do a fun experiment. Take up a programming language (I suggest Python) and write an algo (using PyBrain and NN's in it) that reads and learns from habits of the students (book borrowers in this case) and then recommends them on what they should read next, based on what the machine has learned from their past behavior. It won't be perfect and best prediction, rather it will be pathetic at the begining, but it will recommend good and relevant books as time goes by and the machine/algo knows more about the students.

(1)for that matter any good search engine.

Have fun!!

jnaut5• 17 years ago

Well!! Did I just give a good product idea?? """A recommendation engine for use in libraries to learn from reading habits of students(borrowers)and hence suggest next reads.""" Not sure how much money can it make though. :-)

Edit: Online book/movie selling/renting engines do that, but not sure of real world libraries doing that. Especially now , when the books are going "e". :-)

leecho0• 17 years ago

This is mainly a neural network library, it has svm support mainly for comparison.

It still can't replace weka... which you can kinda use with python http://weka.wikispaces.com/Can+I+use+WEKA+from+Python%3F

jnaut5• 17 years ago

This post's scope was about an ML library in Python. There was in fact no such argument made about replacement of any other much more evolved project like Weka, Mallet, etc.

But still, thanks for bringing forth the fact that there are much more sophisticated libraries/pkgs that exist, though in Java, but can be used with Python. Which is actually true for any Java code, i.e. it is accessible in Python, I use JPype for it, among the few other available options for the purpose.

falsestprophet• 17 years ago

Weka and mallet sound like excellent excuses to learn Scala or Groovy.

PyBrain -- the Python Machine Learning Library

Related Stories