Hi. I wanted to learn more about bioinformatics and came across a play list of Manolis Kellis, teaching a course on Deep Learning in Life Sciences at MIT. Isn’t it amazing? We can just follow a course at MIT online, for free! In this series, I would like to document what I learn and hopefully help, inspire, or motivate someone else.

Deep learning vs Machine learning

For an ignorant person like me, the difference between deep leraning and machine learning was not really apparent. But that is not a problem, because we can learn what the differences are.

There are various kinds of systems that start with an input and end with en output. One is the rule-based systems, in which hand-designed rules indicate how the input should be connected to which output. Another learnaing-based system is the classical machine learning. This type still uses hand-designed rules or features, but does some mapping of those features by itself. Deep learning, in contrast, allows to start with simple features that are not hand-designed, while providing various layers to form more abstract features. By mapping those features through various layers, the mapping of the features might be more complex and insightful.