An approach to Machine Learning with Big Data

Cloud computing offers important resources, performance, and services nowadays when it has became popular to collect, store and analyze large data sets. This thesis builds on Berkeley Data Analysis Stack (BDAS) as a cloud computing environment designed for Big Data handling and analysis. Especially two parts of the BDAS, the cluster resource manager Mesos and the distribution manager Spark will be introduced. They offer important features, such as efficiency, multi-tenancy, and fault tolerance, for cloud computing. The Spark system expands MapReduce, the well-known cloud computing paradigm.

Machine learning algorithms can predict trends and anomalies of large data sets. This thesis will present one of them, a distributed decision tree algorithm, implemented on the Spark system. As an example case, the decision tree will be used on the versatile energy consumption data from mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, of the Carat project. The data consists of information about the usage of the device, such as which applications have been running, network connections, battery temperatures, and screen brightness, for example.

The decision tree aims to find chains of data features that might lead to energy consumption anomalies. Results of the analysis can be used to advise users on how to improve their battery life. This thesis will present selected analysis results together with advantages and disadvantages of the decision tree analysis.