Machine learning(ML) refers to a collection of programming techniques that allow computers to make distinctions or recognize patterns without explicit commands. This field is based on statistical methods and emerged from artificial intelligence research in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Applications of ML include optical character recognition, sentiment analysis, computer vision and prediction making. People with experience in ML are highly desired in the job market and learning based algorithms are making more and more important decisions in our society. So as an emerging programer its probably worth while to learn a bit about how machines learn.
As an introduction to ML this post will walk through how to build a single layer perceptron in Ruby. The perceptron was one of the first functional ML algorithms. It was developed by Frank Rosenblatt in 1957 and was used to build a machine that could identify certain objects. At the time Rosenblatt stated that the “perceptron [is] “the embryo of an electronic computer that [the Navy] expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.”
I am far from an expert in this field but luckily perceptrons are relatively straight forward models to build. I have seen them written in python, Java, and javascript but had a hard time finding a ruby version. Attempting to build this out in ruby seemed like a decent contribution that I could make.
Using a common biological analogy, a perceptron is like a single neuron in a larger brain. It is designed to take in inputs and based on those inputs generate an output for other neurons.
