Faster, Simpler, More Accurate: Practical Automated Machine Learning with Tabular, Text, and Image Data

Abstract

Automated machine learning (AutoML) offers the promise of translating raw data into accurate predictions with just a few lines of code. Rather than relying on human time/effort and manual experimentation, models can be improved by simply letting the AutoML system run for more time. In this hands-on tutorial, we demonstrate fundamental techniques that enable powerful AutoML. We consider standard supervised learning tasks on various types of data including tables, text, images, as well as multi-modal data comprised of multiple types. Rather than technical descriptions of how individual ML models work, we emphasize how to best use models within an overall ML pipeline that takes in raw training data and outputs pre-dictions for test data. A major focus of our tutorial is on automating deep learning, a class of powerful techniques that are cumbersome to manage manually. Despite this, hardly any educational material describes their successful automation. Each topic covered in the tutorial is accompanied by a hands-on Jupyter notebook that implements best practices (which will be available on Github before and after the tutorial). Most of this code is adopted from AutoGluon (autogluon.mxnet.io), a recent AutoML toolkit for automated deep learning that is both state-of-the-art and easy-to-use.