Start Here    

Making Sense of Data: From Statistics to AI

In today's data-driven world, the terms statistics, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are often used interchangeably, yet each field...
mladvocate
Oct 12, 2024 3 min read

From Mendel’s Peas to ChatGPT: A History of Machine Learning

The journey of machine learning is a captivating tale that spans centuries, from the humble pea plants in a 19th-century monastery...
mladvocate
Oct 9, 2024 6 min read

What is Machine Learning? A Beginner’s Guide

Your phone’s camera doesn’t just take pictures anymore. It decides when to use night mode, adjusts focus automatically, and can even...
mladvocate
Oct 3, 2024 2 min read

Welcome to Machine Learning Advocate

ChatGPT answering your questions, your iPhone sorting photos by face, Netflix deciding what to show you next. All of it is...
mladvocate
Sep 28, 2024 43 sec read

Foundations    

How Machine Learning Works: It’s Not Learning

A machine learning model doesn’t work the way you probably think it does. When most people hear the word learning, they...
mladvocate
Mar 7, 2026 3 min read

Machine Learning Foundations Part 4: Understanding Hardware

When your phone slows down because too many apps are open, it lags, gets warm, and everything takes twice as long...
mladvocate
Dec 29, 2024 2 min read

Machine Learning Foundations Part 3: Understanding Algorithms

This is Part 3 of our Foundations series. In Part 1, we covered data. In Part 2, models. Now we’re looking...
mladvocate
Dec 17, 2024 2 min read

Machine Learning Foundations Part 2: Understanding Models

This is Part 2 of our Foundations series. In Part 1, we covered data. Now we’re looking at models: what they...
mladvocate
Dec 8, 2024 2 min read

Machine Learning Foundations Part 1: Understanding Data

Data: The Foundation of Machine Learning This is the first post in a 4-part series that takes you behind the scenes...
mladvocate
Nov 22, 2024 10 min read

Mental Models    

Machine Learning for Non-Technical Professionals

Why Your “Silly Questions” Are Product Requirements We have a technical writer on our team. She’s sharp, curious, and exactly the...
mladvocate
Feb 27, 2026 7 min read

A Friendly Introduction to Principal Component Analysis

Most datasets don’t have two or three measurements per observation. They have dozens, sometimes hundreds. A patient record might include blood...
mladvocate
Feb 24, 2026 5 min read

Bias vs. Variance: Why Your ML Model Can’t Have It All

For years, every time I fixed one problem with my models, I created another one. Make the model more sophisticated to...
mladvocate
Apr 24, 2025 3 min read

Training vs Testing Data: ML Models Must Prove Themselves

Does this sound familiar? You’re tutoring a student for an upcoming math test. You help them solve dozens of practice problems...
mladvocate
Mar 30, 2025 5 min read

Inference vs. Prediction: Different Goals in ML Analysis

Some machine learning applications can make accurate recommendations but can’t explain the reasoning. Others provide clear explanations but aren’t quite as...
mladvocate
Mar 22, 2025 2 min read

Classification vs Regression: Predicting What vs. How Much

In our previous post, we explored supervised vs. unsupervised learning. Now we’re diving into another fundamental choice you’ll face in every...
mladvocate
Feb 28, 2025 5 min read

Mathematics and Statistics    

Machine Learning Math: Start Simple, Learn as You Go

Last year a data analyst I work with told me she’d closed a machine learning tutorial after the first page. Too...
mladvocate
Jan 21, 2025 1 min read

ML in the Wild    

Machine Learning in Healthcare: AI Scribes and Heart Disease Screening

How ambient AI scribes turn doctor-patient conversations into clinical notes, and how a University of Michigan model detects hidden heart disease...
mladvocate
Feb 15, 2026 4 min read

Machine Learning in the NBA: Player Tracking and Injury Prevention

Every NBA arena has cameras mounted in the catwalks that track every player and the ball at 25 frames per second....
mladvocate
Feb 8, 2026 2 min read

Strike Zone Prediction Model: How Neural Networks Analyze MLB Statcast Data

Baseball has always been a numbers game. Batting averages, earned run averages, and RBIs have been part of the sport for...
mladvocate
Feb 8, 2026 2 min read

How Formula 1 Teams Use Machine Learning to Win Races

In Formula 1, milliseconds decide races. The cars generate massive amounts of data, around 400 GB per race from sensors tracking...
mladvocate
Sep 7, 2025 1 min read

Machine Learning in Sports: How AI Predicts NFL Tackles

This is the first post in the “ML in the Wild” series, where we look at specific machine learning applications in...
mladvocate
Jun 14, 2025 1 min read

Because it's Friday    

Because It’s Friday: The Animal Fart Database

Somewhere between a Twitter joke and a peer-reviewed research tool lives #DoesItFart, a crowdsourced spreadsheet maintained by biologists cataloging...
mladvocate
Mar 7, 2026 41 sec read

Use Cases and Examples    

How I Vibe Coded an AI Assistant for My Blog in One Weekend

Last weekend I built an AI assistant for this blog in about a day, using roughly five dollars of cloud services and a handful of open-source tools. The idea...
mladvocate
Mar 11, 2026 4 min read

All Stories

Supervised vs Unsupervised Learning: The Two Main Ways Machines “Learn”

Remember learning to ride a bike? Some of us had a parent running alongside, holding the seat and shouting guidance: “Pedal...
mladvocate
Feb 15, 2025 5 min read
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