Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900)Describe fundamental principles of machine learning on AzureEasy

A financial institution wants to develop a machine learning model to detect fraudulent transactions. The model needs to classify each transaction as either 'fraudulent' or 'legitimate'. Which type of machine learning problem is this?

  1. AReinforcement Learning
  2. BClustering
  3. CClassification
  4. DRegression
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. Classification

This is a classification problem because the model needs to assign each transaction to one of two predefined categories: 'fraudulent' or 'legitimate'. Classification deals with predicting discrete, categorical outputs.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. Reinforcement Learning involves an agent learning through trial and error with rewards, not directly classifying data.
  • B. Clustering groups similar data points without predefined labels, which is unsupervised learning.
  • D. Regression predicts continuous numerical values, not discrete categories.

Classification

A supervised machine learning task that involves predicting a discrete, categorical label or class for a given input.

  • Output is a category (e.g., spam/not spam, fraudulent/legitimate).
  • Requires labeled training data.
  • Common algorithms include Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Support Vector Machines.

Memory trick: Classify 'F' for 'Fraud' into a specific group.

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