Assignment 12

Introduction to Machine Learning

Prof. B. Ravindran
1. (1 mark) Which of the following measure best analyze the performance of a classifier?
(a) Precision
(b) Recall
(c) Accuracy
(d) Time complexity
(e) Depends on the application
Sol. (e)
Explanation Different applications might need to optimize different performance measures.
Applications of machine learning span over playing games to very critical domains(such as
health and security). Measures like accuracy for instance cannot be reliable when we have a
dataset with significant class imbalance. So there cannot be a single measure to analyze the
effectiveness of a classifier in all environments.
2. (1 mark) As discussed in the lecture, most of the classifiers minimize the empirical risk. Which
among the following is an exceptional case?
(a) Perceptron learning algorithm
(b) Artificial Neural Network
(c) Support Vector Machines
(d) both (a) and (b)
(e) None of the above
Sol. (c)
In addition to minimizing empiricle risk, the SVMs also maximize the margin. This is known
as structural risk minimization.
3. (1 mark) What do you expect to happen to the variance component of the generalisation error
of your model as the size of the training data set increases?
(a) Increase in variance
(b) Decrease in variance
(c) No change in variance error
Sol. (b) As the model is exposed to more training data, other things remaining same, the
variance reduces, as the model becomes more stable due to the model having access to and
being trained on additional data points.
4. (1 mark) After completing Introduction to Machine Learning on NPTEL, you have landed a
job as a Data Scientist at YumEll Solutions Inc. Your first assignment as a trainee is to learn a
classifier given some data and present insights on it to your manager, who apparently doesn’t
seem to have any knowledge on Machine Learning. Which of the following classification models
would you pick to best explain the nature of the data and the underlying distribution to your
manager?

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 (a) Linear Models
(b) Support Vector Machines
(c) Decision Trees
(d) Artificial Neural Networks
Sol. (c)

5. (1 mark) What happens when your model complexity (such as interaction terms in linear
regression, order of polynomial in SVM, etc.) increases?
(a) Model Bias increases
(b) Model Bias decreases
(c) Variance of the model increases
(d) Variance of the model decreases
Sol. (b) and (c)
6. (1 mark) Suppose we want an RL agent to learn to play the game of golf. For training purposes,
we make use of a golf simulator program. Assume that the original reward distribution gives
a reward of +10 when the golf ball is hit into the hole and -1 for all other transitions. To aid
the agent’s learning process, we propose to give an additional reward of +3 whenever the ball
is within a 1 metre radius of the hole. Is this additional reward a good idea or not? Why?
(a) Yes. The additional reward will help speed-up learning.
(b) Yes. Getting the ball to within a metre of the hole is like a sub-goal and hence, should
be rewarded.
(c) No. The additional reward may actually hinder learning.
(d) No. It violates the idea that a goal must be outside the agent’s direct control.

Sol. (c)
In this specific case, the additional reward will be detrimental to the learning process, as the
agent will learn to accumulate rewards by keeping the ball within the 1 metre radius circle and
not actually hitting the ball in the hole.
7. (2 marks) You want to toss a fair coin a number of times and obtain the probability of getting
heads by taking a simple average. What is the estimated number of times you’ll have to toss
the coin to make sure that your estimated probability is within 10% of the actual probability,
at least 90% of the time?
(a) 400*ln(20)
(b) 800*ln(20)
(c) 200*ln(20)
Sol. (c)
Since you’re given that the coin is fair, p = 0.5 is the mean of your tosses if tossed infinitely.

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 Hence, margin for error is 0.05. Now, using Chernoff-Hoeffding bounds, we can obtain the
required number of trails as follows.
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P r(|X̄ − 0.5| ≥ 0.05) ≤ 0.1 ≤ 2e−2·(0.05) ·n

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0.05 ≤ e−2·(0.05) ·n
1
ln( ) ≤ −2 · (0.05)2 · n
20
1
n≥ ln(20)
2 · (0.05)2
400
n≥ ln(20)
2
=⇒ n ≥ 200ln(20)

8. (1 mark) A new phone, E-Corp X1 has been announced and it is what you’ve been waiting
for, all along. You decide to read the reviews before buying it. From past experiences, you’ve
figured out that good reviews mean that the product is good 90% of the time and bad reviews
mean that it is bad 70% of the time. Upon glancing through the reviews section, you find out
that the X1 has been reviewed 1269 times and only 127 of them were bad reviews. What is
the probability that, if you order the X1, it is a bad phone?
(a) 0.1362
(b) 0.160
(c) 0.840
(d) 0.773
Sol. (b)
For the solution, let’s use the following abbreviations.
• BP - Bad Phone
• GP - Good Phone
• GR - Good Review
• BR - Bad Review
From the given data, P r(BP |BR) = 0.7 and P r(GP |GR) = 0.9. Using this, Pr(BP—GR) =
1 - Pr(GP—GR) = 0.1.
Hence,

P r(BP ) = P r(BP |BR) · P r(BR) + P r(BP |GR) · P r(GR)

127 1269 − 127
= 0.7 · + 0.1 ·
1269 1269
= 0.160

9. (1 mark) You face a particularly challenging RL problem, where the reward distribution keeps
changing with time. In order to gain maximum reward in this scenario, does it make sense to
stop exploration or continue exploration?

(a) Stop exploration

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(b) Continue exploration

Sol. (b)
Ideally, we would like to continue exploring, since this allows us to adapt to the changing
reward distribution.