Can Machine Learning Solve Problems in Education — Kury.us

By Dave Kearney and Zach Wasilew

There are a few essential items you need to solve a problem with machine learning: a straightforward problem to solve, a bunch of data that illustrates the problem, and a human to organize the data to use machine learning to solve the problem. Oh, and a bunch of computing power. It seems straightforward, right? Not so fast! Jumping those hurdles can be challenging. Machine learning can assist with many opportunities, and although machine learning could significantly improve many difficulties in education, not all problems fit the mold.

As an example, let’s look at how machine learning has been used to solve photo recognition. A straightforward assignment for a human would be to identify objects in a photograph. The average human would have difficulty recognizing cancer in an X-Ray or CRT scan, but identifying a wine glass or a dog in a photo might be more manageable. So let’s stick with simple.

We can easily have humans look at thousands of pictures and tag (or label) them with objects that appear; this picture has a dog; this picture has a cat. Data scientists know how to organize tagged photos…