1. Machine Learning with Databricks
SQL Saturday Madison
5/21/2019
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Introductions
Daniel Woods
Senior BI Talavant
Working with BI since 2015;
Started as a BI Developer
Transitioned to Consulting in 2018
Interested in the marriage between BI and Mathematics
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5/21/2019
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Agenda
Discuss Machine Learning and it’s uses within a business
Overview of Databricks and it’s role with Machine Learning
Demo Overview
Demo
Debrief
Wrap-up
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Machine Learning
Machine Learning (ML) is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to learn and improve from experience
There are 4 main types of Machine Learning: Supervised unsupervised, semi-supervised and Reinforcement
In business, ML can be used to identify and act upon trends in data that lead to better outcomes
For example, ML can be used to predict customer churn
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8. Where Databricks comes in
Databricks is an online, collaborative notebook space that runs with Apache Spark.
Although it is an independent product, Microsoft Azure incorporates it into it’s solution space, making it easily accessible to any of it’s other cloud services
Databricks can run Python, SQL, R or Scala, so it has great flexibility when it comes to Data Science and Engineering
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Why Databricks?
Databricks distributes many tasks across worker nodes that can help speed-up long processes.
This environment is ideal for Machine Learning programs, since we’re often looking at larger data sets and running programs that require a good amount of compute power and memory
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Demo Overview
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The Dataset
Telecom Customer Churn data
Gathered from Kaggle
Keep an eye on the dataset properties
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12. Developing a Churn Prediction Model
Mount data from Azure Blob Storage
Exploratory Data Analysis
Reduce the Feature Set
Boolean Encoding
One-Hot Encoding
Vector Assembly
Model Development
Save the Model
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Demo
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14. Machine Learning and Databricks
Despite a small data set, we see how we can still develop a model that can be used to predict customer churn
However, the F1-score of the GBT model ( as well as the others) is not ideal, and circles back to the quality of the data set
When looking to implement machine learning, the most important part is ensuring that your company is prepared for the journey
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Thank you!
Daniel Woods LinkedIn: If you are able to, Talavant has a survey we’d like for you to complete at There will be a drawing for an Amazon Gift Card for those that complete the survey
5/21/2019
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