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Machine learning is a scientific discipline that is concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases. A learner can take advantage of examples to capture characteristics of interest of their unknown underlying probability distribution. Data can be seen as examples that illustrate relations between observed variables. A major focus of machine learning research is to automatically learn to recognize complex patterns and make intelligent decisions based on data; the difficulty lies in the fact that the set of all possible behaviors given all possible inputs is too large to be covered by the set of observed examples . Hence the learner must generalize from the given examples, so as to be able to produce a useful output in new cases. Artificial intelligence is a closely related field, as are probability theory and statistics, data mining, pattern recognition, adaptive control, computational neuroscience and theoretical computer science. | 
