Stacked Ensembles in H2O & Deep Water - Accessible Deep Learning

Talk #1:

Ensemble machine learning methods are often used when the true prediction function is not easily approximated by a single algorithm. Practitioners may prefer ensemble algorithms when model performance is valued above other factors such as model complexity and training time. The Super Learner algorithm, also called "stacking", learns the optimal combination of the base learner fits. The latest version of H2O now contains a "Stacked Ensemble" method, which allows the user to stack H2O models into a Super Learner. The Stacked Ensemble method is the native H2O version of stacking, previously only available in the h2oEnsemble R package, and now enables stacking from all the H2O APIs: Python, R, Scala, etc.

Speaker Bio:

Erin is a Statistician and Machine Learning Scientist at H2O.ai. Before joining H2O, she was the Principal Data Scientist at Wise.io (acquired by GE Digital) and Marvin Mobile Security (acquired by Veracode) and the founder of DataScientific, Inc. Erin received her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on ensemble machine learning, learning from imbalanced binary-outcome data, influence curve based variance estimation and statistical computing.


Talk #2

Deep Water is H2O's integration with multiple open source deep learning libraries such as TensorFlow, MXNet and Caffe. On top of the performance gains from GPU backends, Deep Water naturally inherits all H2O properties in scalability. ease of use and deployment. In this talk, I will go through the motivation and benefits of Deep Water. After that, I will demonstrate how to build and deploy deep learning models with or without programming experience using H2O's R/Python/Flow (Web) interfaces.

Speaker Bio: Jo-fai

Jo-fai (or Joe) is a data scientist at H2O.ai. Before joining H2O, he was in the business intelligence team at Virgin Media in UK where he developed data products to enable quick and smart business decisions. He also worked remotely for Domino Data Lab in the US as a data science evangelist promoting products via blogging and giving talks at meetups. Joe has a background in water engineering. Before his data science journey, he was an EngD research engineer at STREAM Industrial Doctorate Centre working on machine learning techniques for drainage design optimization. Prior to that, he was an asset management consultant specialized in data mining and constrained optimization for the utilities sector in the UK and abroad. He also holds an MSc in Environmental Management and a BEng in Civil Engineering.