What is machine learning?

Many services of our every day life rely meanwhile on machine learning. Machine learning is a very practical field and provides powerful technologies that allows machines (i.e. computers) to learn from prior data, to extract knowledge, to generalize and to make predictions – similar as we humans can do (see the MAKE intro). There is a very nice and highly recommendable info graphic available by the Royal Society [1]. This includes also an interactive quiz, which can be found here:

Royal Society Infographic “What is machine learning?”

This is part of a larger info campaign about machine learning from the Royal Society:

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/machine-learning/

[1] The Royal Society was formed by a group of natural scientists influenced by Francis BACON (1561-1626).  The first ‘learned society’ meeting on 28 November 1660 followed a lecture at Gresham College by Christopher WREN. Joined by Robert BOYLE and John WILKINS and others, the group received royal approval by King Charles II (1630-1685) in 1663 and was known since as ‘The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’.

Today the Royal Society is a registered charity and the governing body of the Society is its Council and its members are elected by and from the Fellowship. Important to mention is that the Royal Society has an international character: “Science is an inherently international activity. The Society’s aim  is to reinforce the importance of science to build partnerships between nations, promote international relations and science’s role in culture and society”