What Does Training Data Mean?
Training data is an extremely large dataset that is used to teach a machine learning model. Training data is used to teach prediction models that use machine learning algorithms how to extract features that are relevant to specific business goals. For supervised ML models, the training data is labeled. The data used to train unsupervised ML models is not labeled.
The idea of using training data in machine learning programs is a simple concept, but it is also very foundational to the way that these technologies work. The training data is an initial set of data used to help a program understand how to apply technologies like neural networks to learn and produce sophisticated results. It may be complemented by subsequent sets of data called validation and testing sets.
Training data is also known as a training set, training dataset or learning set.
Techopedia Explains Training Data
The training set is the material through which the computer learns how to process information. Machine learning uses algorithms – it mimics the abilities of the human brain to take in diverse inputs and weigh them, in order to produce activations in the brain, in the individual neurons. Artificial neurons replicate a lot of this process with software – machine learning and neural network programs that provide highly detailed models of how our human thought processes work.
With that in mind, training data can be structured in different ways. For sequential decision trees and those types of algorithms, it would be a set of raw text or alphanumerical data that gets classified or otherwise manipulated. On the other hand, for convolutional neural networks that have to do with image processing and computer vision, the training set is often composed of large numbers of images. The idea is that because the machine learning program is so complex and so sophisticated, it uses iterative training on each of those images to eventually be able to recognize features, shapes and even subjects such as people or animals. The training data is absolutely essential to the process – it can be thought of as the “food” the system uses to operate.
