Machine Learning is a multidisciplinary field and it can be very confusing when you are getting started to differentiate machine learning from the closely related fields of Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining.
Foundations
Machine Learning is built on the field of Mathematics and Computer Science. Specifically, machine learning methods are best described using linear and matrix algebra and their behaviours are best understood using the tools of probability and statistics. The fields of Statistics, Probability and Artificial Intelligence that represent the foundational subjects for machine learning.
Probability
The field of probability theory is the study of characterising the likelihood of random events. Probability theory is a branch of mathematics and provides the basis for the field of statistics.
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Machine learning methods are often described in the language of probability and there are methods that directly employ probability theories such as Bayes’ Theorem.