Given machine learning, as a subject, has existed for many decades, it begs the question: why hadn't it become as popular as it is today much sooner? Indeed, the theories of complex machine learning algorithms such as neural networks were well known by the late 1990s, and the foundation had been established well before that in the theoretical realm.
There are a few factors that can be attributed to the success of machine learning:
- The Internet: The web played a critical role in democratizing information and connecting people in an unprecedented way. It made the exchange of information simple in a way that could not have been achieved through the pre-existing methods of print media communication. Not only did the web transform and revolutionize the dissemination of information, it also opened up new opportunities. Google's PageRank, as mentioned earlier, was one of the first large-scale and highly visible successes in the application of statistical...
