How an end-to-end machine learning pipeline looks like?

Pratik Kumar Roy
2 min readAug 20, 2023

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An end-to-end machine learning pipeline refers to the complete process of building, deploying, and maintaining a machine learning model, starting from collecting and preprocessing data to making predictions on new, unseen data. It encompasses all the steps required to turn raw data into a functional, deployable model.

You can watch this video to learn more:

Here are the key stages of an end-to-end machine-learning pipeline:

Data Collection and Preparation:

— Identify and gather relevant data sources for your problem.
— Clean the data by handling missing values, outliers, and inconsistencies.
— Perform data transformations like normalization, scaling, and encoding categorical variables.

Feature Engineering:

— Create new features from existing ones to provide more meaningful information to the model.
— Select and extract the most important features that contribute to the model’s performance.
— Use domain knowledge to generate relevant features.

Data Splitting:

— Divide the dataset into training, validation, and test sets.
— The training set is used to train the model, the validation set helps in tuning hyperparameters, and the test set evaluates the model’s generalization.

Model Selection and Training:

— Choose an appropriate machine learning algorithm or model architecture based on the problem type (classification, regression, clustering, etc.).
— Train the selected model on the training data using optimization techniques like gradient descent.
— Adjust hyperparameters to find the best configuration through cross-validation or grid search.

Model Evaluation:

— Assess the model’s performance using appropriate evaluation metrics (accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, etc.) on the validation set.
— Iterate the model, hyperparameters, and features based on the evaluation results.

Model Deployment:

— Once a satisfactory model is obtained, deploy it to a production environment.
— Create an interface (API) for the model to receive new data and make predictions.
— Monitor the deployed model’s performance and reliability.

Continuous Monitoring and Maintenance:

— Regularly monitor the model’s performance and accuracy over time.
— Retrain the model with new data to ensure it adapts to changing patterns.
— Update the model to newer versions as better algorithms or architectures become available.

Automation and Scalability:

— As the pipeline becomes more mature, automate repetitive tasks using scripts or workflow tools.
— Design the pipeline to handle larger datasets and accommodate more complex models.

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