Machine Learning with Weka

I'll be discussing more about associative set mining and SE-Trees later.  Right now I would like to tell you about a machine learning tool that I have used for the last eight years called WEKA.  If you haven't used it, I would suggest that you download it and give it a try.  It is open source and has a large number of data manipulation and machine learning algorithms built into it.  The main reason I use this application is that it allows me to try a number of machine learning algorithms quickly to help determine which one might provide a promising alternative to do more in-depth analysis with.  Here are a couple of Weka screen shots for one of my projects to predict post-operative length of stay based upon a number of pre and intra operative variables.

Weka Explorer - Filter and transform your data

M5Prime Decision Tree for Numeric Prediction

This great tool was developed and is maintained by the Machine Learning Group at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.  You can download Weka from their site: http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/  Weka is a java based application, but I need to be able to build predictive models and use them for on demand predictions within my .net based software that I write.  In my next blog I will show you how I have accomplished that.