How Does Machine Learning Model Training Work?

After training hundreds of machine learning models in production environments, I’ve learned that successful model training is equal parts art and science. The process of transforming raw data into accurate predictions involves sophisticated mathematics, careful data preparation, and iterative experimentation. This guide explains exactly how machine learning models learn from data, based on real-world experience deploying ML systems at scale.

The Fundamentals of Machine Learning Training

Machine learning training is an optimization problem: we want to find the function that best maps inputs to outputs based on examples. Unlike traditional programming where we explicitly code rules, machine learning infers rules from data.