1.1. The learning problem

What is learning? Learning is the process of discovering relationships between events. Knowledge of the relationships between events is of great importance in coping with the environment. Naturally, humans tend to be quite good at the process of learning—so good that we sometimes do not even realize when it is hard.

The learning problem which we focus on is learning for computers. In particular, “How can a computer learn?” A few examples are illustrative:

1. How can we make a computer with a microphone output a text version of what is being spoken?
2. How can we make a computer with a camera recognize John?
3. How can we make a computer controlling a robot arrive at some location?

We will work on learning a function from some input space to some output space - the supervised learning model.