Machine Learning for Management Applications

Abstract

Learning is a very general term encompassing a wide variety of activities and is, hence difficult to define. It has commonly been regarded as the process of assimilating knowledge leading to increased understanding, summarization of experience, or any process which helps improve performance over time. Machine learning is an area of artificial intelligence that deals with the design of computer systems that emulate any of these learning behaviours. In operational terms, machine learning occurs through induction (also called learning from examples), observation, and analogy. In this note, two inductive learning systems are described and their applicability to management problems is illustrated with a simple loan characterization problem.