6.1. Modelling Fundamentals

Before diving into specific machine learning algorithms, we need to establish a solid foundation of core concepts. This section introduces the fundamental principles that underlie all machine learning models. Understanding these concepts will help you make better decisions when building and evaluating models, and avoid common pitfalls that beginners often encounter.

Throughout this section, we prioritize intuition over mathematical formalism. Mathematical details are provided where helpful, but always after building intuition first. We will build our intuition for modeling from the ground up. We’ll start with simple concepts and progressively build toward more sophisticated ideas.