AS ALWAYS, OLD SAYINGS NEVER GET IT WRONG

“You learn from your mistakes”

🇬🇧 You learn from your mistakes
🇻🇦 Errando discitur
🇮🇹 Sbagliando si impara
🇩🇪 Aus Fehlern lernt man
🇪🇸 Echando a perder se aprende
🇯🇵 七転び八起き — Fall 7 times, stand up 8
🇨🇳 失败是成功之母 — Failure is the mother of success

But guess who takes this more literally than anyone? Machine Learning algorithms.

MAKING MISTAKES…
The algorithm makes a prediction and calculates how wrong it was:

L = 1/n ∑(y − ŷ)²

Translation: how far off were you from the right answer? Square it so it hurts even more. 😅

…AND LEARNING!
Parameters are adjusted in the direction that reduces the error:

θ = θ − η ∂L/∂θ

Translation: ok, next time I’ll correct a little. η is “how much” I correct.

🔁 REPEAT a few million times.

From Neural Networks to Gradient Boosting, from Linear Regression to SVMs, the core idea is the same: measure your mistake, learn from it, try again.

A universal principle, from ancient proverbs to artificial intelligence.

Sabatino Vacchiano