Amazon MLS-C01 Practice Test - Questions Answers, Page 15

To improve the training speed of a time-series forecasting model using TensorFlow, the Machine Learning Specialist should change the TensorFlow code to implement a Horovod distributed framework supported by Amazon SageMaker.Horovod is a free and open-source software framework for distributed deep learning training using TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, and Apache MXNet1.Horovod can scale up to hundreds of GPUs with upwards of 90% scaling efficiency2.Horovod is easy to use, as it requires only a few lines of Python code to modify an existing training script2.Horovod is also portable, as it runs the same for TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, and MXNet; on premise, in the cloud, and on Apache Spark2.

Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed service that provides every developer and data scientist with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly3.Amazon SageMaker supports Horovod as a built-in distributed training framework, which means that the Machine Learning Specialist does not need to install or configure Horovod separately4.Amazon SageMaker also provides a number of features and tools to simplify and optimize the distributed training process, such as automatic scaling, debugging, profiling, and monitoring4. By using Amazon SageMaker, the Machine Learning Specialist can parallelize the training to as many machines as needed to achieve the business goals, while minimizing coding effort and infrastructure changes.

References:

1: Horovod (machine learning) - Wikipedia

2: Home - Horovod

3: Amazon SageMaker -- Machine Learning Service -- AWS

4: Use Horovod with Amazon SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker

To improve the test error for the image classifier, the Machine Learning Specialist should use the technique of increasing the training data by adding variation in rotation for training images. This technique is called data augmentation, which is a way of artificially expanding the size and diversity of the training dataset by applying various transformations to the original images, such as rotation, flipping, cropping, scaling, etc. Data augmentation can help the model learn more robust features that are invariant to the orientation, position, and size of the objects in the images.This can improve the generalization ability of the model and reduce the test error, especially for cases where the images are not well-aligned or have different perspectives1.

References:

1: Image Augmentation - Amazon SageMaker

The XGBoost algorithm is a popular machine learning technique for classification problems. It is based on the idea of boosting, which is to combine many weak learners (decision trees) into a strong learner (ensemble model).

The XGBoost algorithm can handle imbalanced data by using thescale_pos_weightparameter, which controls the balance of positive and negative weights in the objective function. A typical value to consider is the ratio of negative cases to positive cases in the data. By increasing this parameter, the algorithm will pay more attention to the minority class (positive) and reduce the number of false negatives.

The XGBoost algorithm can also use different evaluation metrics to optimize the model performance. The default metric iserror, which is the misclassification rate. However, this metric can be misleading for imbalanced data, as it does not account for the different costs of false positives and false negatives. A better metric to use isAUC, which is the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The ROC curve plots the true positive rate against the false positive rate for different threshold values. The AUC measures how well the model can distinguish between the two classes, regardless of the threshold. By changing theeval_metricparameter to AUC, the algorithm will try to maximize the AUC score and reduce the number of false negatives.

Therefore, the combination of steps that should be taken to reduce the number of false negatives are to increase thescale_pos_weightparameter and change theeval_metricparameter to AUC.

References:

XGBoost Parameters

XGBoost for Imbalanced Classification

Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed service that enables developers and data scientists to quickly and easily build, train, and deploy machine learning models at any scale. SageMaker provides a variety of tools and frameworks to support the entire machine learning workflow, from data preparation to model deployment.

One of the tools that SageMaker offers is the Amazon SageMaker Python SDK, which is a high-level library that simplifies the interaction with SageMaker APIs and services. The SageMaker Python SDK allows you to write code in Python and use popular frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, MXNet, and more. You can use the SageMaker Python SDK to create and manage SageMaker resources such as notebook instances, training jobs, endpoints, and feature store.

If you need to continue working on a TensorFlow project using SageMaker for training without Wi-Fi access, the best approach is to download the TensorFlow Docker container used in SageMaker from GitHub to your local environment, and use the SageMaker Python SDK to test the code. This way, you can ensure that your code is compatible with the SageMaker environment and avoid any potential issues when you upload your code to SageMaker and start the training job. You can also use the same code to deploy your model to a SageMaker endpoint when you have Wi-Fi access again.

To download the TensorFlow Docker container used in SageMaker, you can visit theSageMaker Docker GitHub repositoryand follow the instructions to build the image locally. You can also use theSageMaker Studio Image Build CLIto automate the process of building and pushing the Docker image to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR). To use the SageMaker Python SDK to test the code, you can install the SDK on your local machine by following theinstallation guide. You can also refer to the TensorFlow documentation for more details on how to use the SageMaker Python SDK with TensorFlow.

References:

SageMaker Docker GitHub repository

SageMaker Studio Image Build CLI

SageMaker Python SDK installation guide

SageMaker Python SDK TensorFlow documentation

Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics is a service that enables you to analyze streaming data in real time using SQL or Apache Flink applications. You can use Kinesis Data Analytics to process and gain insights from data streams such as web logs, clickstreams, IoT data, and more.

To use SQL to query a data stream of GZIP files, you need to first transform the data into a format that Kinesis Data Analytics can understand, such as JSON, CSV, or Apache Parquet. You can use an AWS Lambda function to perform this transformation and send the output to a Kinesis data stream that is connected to your Kinesis Data Analytics application. This way, you can use SQL to query the stream with the least latency, as Lambda functions are triggered in near real time by the incoming data and Kinesis Data Analytics can process the data as soon as it arrives.

The other options are not optimal for this scenario, as they introduce more latency or complexity. AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that can perform ETL (extract, transform, and load) tasks on data sources, but it is not designed for real-time streaming data analysis. An Amazon Kinesis Client Library is a Java library that enables you to build custom applications that process data from Kinesis data streams, but it requires more coding and configuration than using a Lambda function. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a service that can deliver streaming data to destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Splunk, but it does not support SQL queries on the data.

References:

What Is Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL Applications?

Using AWS Lambda with Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Using AWS Lambda with Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

To optimize the query performance of Athena, one of the best practices is to convert the data into a columnar format, such as Apache Parquet or Apache ORC. Columnar formats store data by columns rather than by rows, which allows Athena to scan only the columns that are relevant to the query, reducing the amount of data read and improving the query speed. Columnar formats also support compression and encoding schemes that can reduce the storage space and the data scanned per query, further enhancing the performance and reducing the cost.

In contrast, plaintext CSV files store data by rows, which means that Athena has to scan the entire row even if only a few columns are needed for the query. This increases the amount of data read and the query latency. Moreover, plaintext CSV files do not support compression or encoding, which means that they take up more storage space and incur higher query costs.

Therefore, the Machine Learning Specialist should transform the dataset to Apache Parquet format to minimize query runtime.

References:

Top 10 Performance Tuning Tips for Amazon Athena

Columnar Storage Formats

Using compressions will reduce the amount of data scanned by Amazon Athena, and also reduce your S3 bucket storage. It's a Win-Win for your AWS bill. Supported formats: GZIP, LZO, SNAPPY (Parquet) and ZLIB.

To develop a daily ETL workflow containing multiple ETL jobs that can start as soon as data is uploaded to Amazon S3, the best configuration is to use AWS Lambda to trigger an AWS Step Functions workflow to wait for dataset uploads to complete in Amazon S3. Use AWS Glue to join the datasets. Use an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to send an SNS notification to the Administrator in the case of a failure.

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can use Lambda to create functions that respond to events such as data uploads to Amazon S3. You can also use Lambda to invoke other AWS services such as AWS Step Functions and AWS Glue.

AWS Step Functions is a service that lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. You can use Step Functions to create a state machine that defines the sequence and logic of your ETL workflow. You can also use Step Functions to handle errors and retries, and to monitor the execution status of your workflow.

AWS Glue is a serverless data integration service that makes it easy to discover, prepare, and combine data for analytics. You can use Glue to create and run ETL jobs that can join data from multiple sources in Amazon S3. You can also use Glue to catalog your data and make it searchable and queryable.

Amazon CloudWatch is a service that monitors your AWS resources and applications. You can use CloudWatch to create alarms that trigger actions when a metric or a log event meets a specified threshold. You can also use CloudWatch to send notifications to Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topics, which can then deliver the notifications to subscribers such as email addresses or phone numbers.

Therefore, by using these services together, you can achieve the following benefits:

You can start the ETL workflow as soon as data is uploaded to Amazon S3 by using Lambda functions to trigger Step Functions workflows.

You can wait for all the datasets to be available in Amazon S3 by using Step Functions to poll the S3 buckets and check the data completeness.

You can join the datasets with terabyte-sized datasets in Amazon S3 by using Glue ETL jobs that can scale and parallelize the data processing.

You can store the results of joining datasets in Amazon S3 by using Glue ETL jobs to write the output to S3 buckets.

You can send a notification to the Administrator if one of the jobs fails by using CloudWatch alarms to monitor the Step Functions or Glue metrics and send SNS notifications in case of a failure.

The agency wants to analyze the census data for population segmentation, which is a type of unsupervised learning problem that aims to group similar data points together based on their attributes. The agency can use a combination of algorithms that can perform dimensionality reduction and clustering on the data to achieve this goal.

Dimensionality reduction is a technique that reduces the number of features or variables in a dataset while preserving the essential information and relationships. Dimensionality reduction can help improve the efficiency and performance of clustering algorithms, as well as facilitate data visualization and interpretation. One of the most common algorithms for dimensionality reduction is principal component analysis (PCA), which transforms the original features into a new set of orthogonal features called principal components that capture the maximum variance in the data. PCA can help reduce the noise and redundancy in the data and reveal the underlying structure and patterns.

Clustering is a technique that partitions the data into groups or clusters based on their similarity or distance. Clustering can help discover the natural segments or categories in the data and understand their characteristics and differences. One of the most popular algorithms for clustering is k-means, which assigns each data point to one of k clusters based on the nearest mean or centroid. K-means can handle large and high-dimensional datasets and produce compact and spherical clusters.

Therefore, the combination of algorithms that would provide the appropriate insights for population segmentation are PCA and k-means. The agency can use PCA to reduce the dimensionality of the census data from 500 features to a smaller number of principal components that capture most of the variation in the data. Then, the agency can use k-means to cluster the data based on the principal components and identify the segments of the population that share similar characteristics.

References:

Amazon SageMaker Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Amazon SageMaker K-Means Algorithm

The company wants to predict the demand for a new product that will soon be launched, based on the sales history of similar products. This is a time series forecasting problem, which requires a machine learning algorithm that can learn from historical data and generate future predictions.

One of the most suitable solutions for this problem is to use the Amazon SageMaker DeepAR algorithm, which is a supervised learning algorithm for forecasting scalar time series using recurrent neural networks (RNN). DeepAR can handle multiple related time series, such as the sales of different products, and learn a global model that captures the common patterns and trends across the time series. DeepAR can also generate probabilistic forecasts that provide confidence intervals and quantify the uncertainty of the predictions.

DeepAR can outperform traditional forecasting methods, such as ARIMA, especially when the dataset contains hundreds or thousands of related time series. DeepAR can also use the trained model to forecast the demand for new products that are similar to the ones it has been trained on, by using the categorical features that encode the product attributes. For example, the company can use the product type, brand, flavor, size, and price as categorical features to group the products and learn the typical behavior for each group.

Therefore, the Machine Learning Specialist should apply the Amazon SageMaker DeepAR algorithm to forecast the demand for the new product, by using the sales history of the existing products as the training dataset, and the product attributes as the categorical features.

References:

DeepAR Forecasting Algorithm - Amazon SageMaker

Now available in Amazon SageMaker: DeepAR algorithm for more accurate time series forecasting