NCA-ADS - Machine Learning With RAPIDS - Section 2.2

Apply regression, classification, and clustering.

Distinguish between regression, classification, and clustering as supervised and unsupervised problem types. Select and apply the appropriate algorithm family based on whether the target variable is continuous, categorical, or absent.

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleMachine Learning With RAPIDSmedium

A data scientist needs to predict the exact sale price of a house given its features such as square footage, number of bedrooms, and location. Which cuML algorithm family and target type correctly describe this task?

  • AClassification, because the model assigns each house to a price category
  • BClustering, because grouping similar houses reveals natural price segments without needing labelled training data
  • CRegression, because the target variable is a continuous numeric value and the model learns from labelled training examples Correct
  • DDimensionality reduction, because feature engineering must precede any numeric prediction task
Distinguish supervised regression from classification and unsupervised clustering by identifying whether the target is continuous, discrete, or absent. Supervised learning requires labelled training data. When the label is a continuous numeric quantity - such as a sale price - the task is regression. cuML's linear regression and random forest regressor both operate on continuous targets and run natively on GPU memory via cuDF DataFrames. Classification, by contrast, maps inputs to a finite discrete label set (for example, price tier A/B/C). Clustering such as k-means or DBSCAN operates without labels and groups observations by similarity rather than predicting a numeric output for each sample.

Why A is wrong: Classification predicts a discrete label from a finite set of categories, not a continuous numeric value such as a sale price expressed in dollars

Why B is wrong: Clustering is unsupervised and produces group assignments rather than a numeric prediction for each individual observation; labelled sale prices already exist in the training set

Why C is correct: Regression is the supervised learning family for continuous targets. Sale price is a continuous numeric output, and cuML provides GPU-accelerated estimators such as linear regression and random forest regressor that fit this exact task

Why D is wrong: Dimensionality reduction is a data preprocessing technique, not a predictive modelling family; it does not produce per-sample numeric predictions and does not replace the choice of regression

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