Datalab 03: Clustering Analyses
We start with the Handwriting Recognition using K-Means clustering project from Codecademy to put the knowledge and skills we gained yesterday to the test. It's all quite straightforward really!
0) Learning Objectives:
- Understand and apply a clustering algorithm.
Table of contents:
- Stand-up: 0.5 Hours
- Q&A: 0.5 hours
- Handwriting Recognition using K-Means: 3 hours
Questions or issues?
If you have any questions or issues regarding the course material after the Q&A, please first ask your peers or ask us if you can't figure it out together!
Good luck!
0) Stand-up
We start by hosting a stand-up. Form groups of ~ 5 and run on-another through the following points:
- What progress have you made up since last datalab?
- What progress do you anticipate to make today?
- What impediments are you facing or expecting?
- With what could you use help or support?
Open your worklog and plan your day informed by the stand-up and today's schedule
1) Q & A
We start by briefly reflecting on what we learned about supervised learning. Do you have any questions? Now is the time to ask them!
2) Handwriting Recognition using K-Means
The U.S. Postal Service has been using machine learning and scanning technologies since 1999. Because its postal offices have to look at roughly half a billion pieces of mail every day, they have done extensive research and developed very efficient algorithms for reading and understanding addresses. And not only the post office: ATMs can recognize handwritten bank checks. Evernote can recognize handwritten task lists. Expensify can recognize handwritten receipts. But how do they do it?
In this codecademy project, you will be using K-means clustering (the algorithm behind this magic) and scikit-learn to cluster images of handwritten digits and predict a handwritten digit.
Please click here to get started!
hint: Please click here if you are stuck!
4) In-Class discussion
At 16:00, there's a meeting you're encouraged to take part in to ask questions and to discuss our progress and reflect on today activities.