Out of many science disciplines that you could pursue a career in, Environmental Science is the one you should go for if you have a knack to save the planet. MSc (Environmental Science) is a two-year professional post-graduate programme for candidates concerned about protecting and preserving the natural environment. Being a multidisciplinary subject, it covers concepts like ecology, biological sciences, geography, physical science, atmosphere, etc. By pursuing this course, students will get in-depth knowledge and develop skills in many aspects like sustainable management, air pollution control, environmental and soil management, etc.
Humans are known to reduce their workload by utilizing their intelligence to make the task easier and more comprehensible. Be it inventing the art of designing the wheel or discovering scientific advancements that have helped us to be ahead of all the species. Humans can teach living beings with its dominance however humans have also crafted the skill to train non-living items such as computer models so as to improvise their jobs. The idea of Machine Learning is correlated to the idea of Artificial Intelligence and its astonishing to understand that all these concepts were prevalent back in the 18th century. The very first machine which was trained to do jobs voluntarily was an automated chess-playing machine. The device had some predefined moves fixed using several mechanical levers. Although the application was very plain however it was revolutionary at that time to design a chess machine where one would compete with a machine. Tracing through the timeline, we find another application of AI where Alan Tuning helped in ending World War II just by inventing the machine that could decode a highly complicated code by the Germans in a couple of minutes.
The field of Artificial Intelligence has always been very interesting and full of possibilities. Before diving deeper let us understand why we need Machine learning? The programming approach that we have been using for problem-solving is a traditional approach. Wherein we provide a problem, provide a code as if how to solve a problem and come to a solution. However, in this approach, most of the logical thinking is done by the human brain, even if the logic behind the problem is redundant. In order to cope up with this situation we devised a process whereby using the problem statement and the previous output of similar logic, the machine not only processes the code but also remembers the key features of the problem so as to solve it. This approach made a revolutionary change in all peripherals of technology.
For understanding how a machine learning model works, let’stake an example of a student who is joining his very first day in school. The teacher teaches by showing a red apple that it’s an apple. Similarly, by showing the image of every fruit and describing the features of every fruit, the teacher explains it all. Now when the student is asked to detect the name of a fruit that is orange in color and tastes sweet with multiple seeds in it, he can very easily say it’s orange. This is exactly how machine learning works. It is important to note that the dataset or in the above example the instances that the teacher gave the student just to explain the fruits, plays a very important role. If any data in the dataset is missing or is incorrect then it directly affects the accuracy.
Nowadays Machine Learning is the new hype. Almost every possible field be it agriculture, cybersecurity, health sector, transport sector, finds some application or the other of ML. Now with machines taking over most of the sectors, threats for unemployment are a concern. However, we need to understand that in the application phase, ML will generate more jobs for the mass. Just like with the invention of cellular communication, there was a wave of employment. In a nutshell, Machine Learning is a great invention of humankind which would play as a major catalyst in our motto for futuristic advancement.
Manpreet Singh Bajwa
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
SGT University
