Posts Tagged ‘artificial intelligence’

Stata/Python integration part 7: Machine learning with support vector machines

Machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence are a collection of algorithms used to identify patterns in data. These algorithms have exotic-sounding names like “random forests”, “neural networks”, and “spectral clustering”. In this post, I will show you how to use one of these algorithms called a “support vector machines” (SVM). I don’t have space to explain an SVM in detail, but I will provide some references for further reading at the end. I am going to give you a brief introduction and show you how to implement an SVM with Python.

Our goal is to use an SVM to differentiate between people who are likely to have diabetes and those who are not. We will use age and HbA1c level to differentiate between people with and without diabetes. Age is measured in years, and HbA1c is a blood test that measures glucose control. The graph below displays diabetics with red dots and nondiabetics with blue dots. An SVM model predicts that older people with higher levels of HbA1c in the red-shaded area of the graph are more likely to have diabetes. Younger people with lower HbA1c levels in the blue-shaded area are less likely to have diabetes. Read more…