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Learn Machine Learning Concepts

Interactively
Five freely available tools that intuitively break down the complicated machine learning
concepts

Parul Pandey
Oct 4 · 4 min read

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

How Machine Learning Algorithms work under the hood is an aspect not understood
by many. What does a layer of CNN see? How backpropagation works,? How exactly
are the weights updated in a layer? These are some of the questions that pop in our
minds time and again. These concepts can be particularly overwhelming for the
beginners who want to have a hard time in aligning mathematical equations with the
theory. The good news is that some people understand this pain and want to provide
alternative forms of learning. This article is a compilation of five such tools that go
beyond the theory and instead present intuitively explanations of the standard
machine learning concepts.

1. MLaddict.com

source: https://www.mladdict.com/

mladdict.com is an excellent tool if you are looking to understand the basic

mathematical concepts of the following four algorithms:

Linear Regression

Neural Network

Recurrent Network

Q learning agent
It opens a simulator in your browser and then demonstrates what happens at each
stage of the algorithm. Below is a demo of the simulator showing how linear regression
works using the gradient descent algorithm.

Video by Author | content from mladdict.com

2. Explained Visually

source: mladdict.com

Explained Visually (EV) is an experiment which aims to make challenging ideas

intuitive. It is inspired by the work of Bret Victor’s Explorable Explanations. The last
updated article on this website dates back to 2017, so you will not find any latest
materials, but the ones that are there are simply great. I have borrowed a few of their
visual explanations in some of my blogs since they are so beautifully created. Below is a
sneak peek into how EV explains the concept of Principal Component Analysis(PCA).
Check out their site for other exciting works.

Video by Author. Content from Explained Visually (EV)

3. Seeing Theory
 source: https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/

Seeing Theory is a site that offers a visual introduction to probability and statistics.
The goal of this website is to make statistics more accessible through interactive
visualizations. The book provides intuitive explanations for the following six statistical
concepts.

Basic Probability

Compound Probability

Probability Distributions

Frequentist Inference

Bayesian Inference

Regression Analysis

Let’s see how seeing theory introduces the basic concepts of probability theory.

Video by Author. Content from Seeing Theory

4. R2D3: Statistics and Data Visualization

source: R2D3: Statistics and Data Visualization

R2D3 is an experiment in expressing statistical thinking with interactive design. It

provides a visual introduction to machine learning concepts in a structured way.
Currently, the following topics are available on the site:

Part 1: A Decision Tree

Part 2: Bias and Variance

Design in a World where Machines are Learning

Making Sense of COVID-19

Here is how you can visualize how a decision tree makes classifications
 Video by Author | content from R2D3

5. CNN Explainer

source: https://poloclub.github.io/cnn-explainer/

CNN Explainer is an interactive visualization system designed to help non-experts

learn about Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). CNN Explainer is a tool that
combines CNN’s model overview and dynamic visual explanation that help users
understand the underlying components of CNNs. Through smooth transitions across
levels of abstraction, our tool enables users to inspect the interplay between low-level
mathematical operations and high-level model structures.
For more information, check out our manuscript CNN Explainer: Learning
Convolutional Neural Networks with Interactive Visualization or try yourself using the
live demo here. Below is a quick demo of how you can use the tool.

Demo Video “CNN Explainer: Learning Convolutional Neural Networks with Interactive Visualization”

Conclusion
To conclude, we looked at five useful tools which make machine learning and statistics
concept more fun to learn. It is rightly said that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Complicated jargons can become a lot easier to comprehend when they are presented
in an interactive form. This also helps to lower the barrier for entry into the machine
learning domain for beginners.

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