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143 changes: 143 additions & 0 deletions docs/release-notes/0.7/release-0.7.md
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# ML.NET 0.7 Release Notes

Today we are excited to release ML.NET 0.7, which our algorithms strongly
recommend you to try out! This release enables making recommendations with
matrix factorization, identifying unusual events with anomaly detection,
adding custom transformations to your ML pipeline, and more! We also have a
small surprise for those who work in teams that use both .NET and Python.
Finally, we wanted to thank the many new contributors to the project since the
last release!

### Installation

ML.NET supports Windows, MacOS, and Linux. See [supported OS versions of .NET
Core
2.0](https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/release-notes/2.0/2.0-supported-os.md)
for more details.

You can install ML.NET NuGet from the CLI using:
```
dotnet add package Microsoft.ML
```

From package manager:
```
Install-Package Microsoft.ML
```

### Release Notes

Below are some of the highlights from this release.

* Added Matrix factorization for recommendation problems
([#1263](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/pull/1263))

* Matrix factorization (MF) is a common approach to recommendations when
you have data on how users rated items in your catalog. For example, you
might know how users rated some movies and want to recommend which other
movies they are likely to watch next.
* ML.NET's MF uses [LIBMF](https://github.com/cjlin1/libmf).
* Example usage of MF can be found
[here](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/blob/d68388a1c9994a5b429b194b64b2b0782834cb78/docs/samples/Microsoft.ML.Samples/Dynamic/MatrixFactorization.cs).
The example is general but you can imagine that the matrix rows
correspond to users, matrix columns correspond to movies, and matrix
values correspond to ratings. This matrix would be quite sparse as users
have only rated a small subset of the catalog.
* Note: [ML.NET
0.3](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/blob/d68388a1c9994a5b429b194b64b2b0782834cb78/docs/release-notes/0.3/release-0.3.md)
included Field-Aware Factorization Machines (FFM) as a learner for
binary classification. FFM is a generalization of MF, but there are a
few differences:
* FFM enables taking advantage of other information beyond the rating
a user assigns to an item (e.g. movie genre, movie release date,
user profile).
* FFM is currently limited to binary classification (the ratings needs
to be converted to 0 or 1), whereas MF solves a regression problem
(the ratings can be continuous numbers).
* If the only information available is the user-item ratings, MF is
likely to be significantly faster than FFM.
* A more in-depth discussion can be found
[here](https://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/talks/recsys.pdf).

* Enabled anomaly detection scenarios
([#1254](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/pull/1254))

* [Anomaly detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection)
enables identifying unusual values or events. It is used in scenarios
such as fraud detection (identifying suspicious credit card
transactions) and server monitoring (identifying unusual activity).
* This release includes the following anomaly detection techniques:
SSAChangePointDetector, SSASpikeDetector, IidChangePointDetector, and
IidSpikeDetector.
* Example usage can be found
[here](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/blob/7fb76b026d0035d6da4d0b46bd3f2a6e3c0ce3f1/test/Microsoft.ML.TimeSeries.Tests/TimeSeriesDirectApi.cs).

* Enabled using ML.NET in Windows x86 apps
([#1008](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/pull/1008))

* ML.NET can now be used in x86 apps.
* Some components that are based on external dependencies (e.g.
TensorFlow) will not be available in x86. Please open an issue on GitHub
for discussion if this blocks you.

* Added the `CustomMappingEstimator` for custom data transformations
[#1406](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/pull/1406)

* ML.NET has a wide variety of data transformations for pre-processing and
featurizing data (e.g. processing text, images, categorical features,
etc.).
* However, there might be application-specific transformations that would
be useful to do within an ML.NET pipeline (as opposed to as a
pre-processing step). For example, calculating [cosine
similarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosine_similarity) between two
text columns (after featurization) or something as simple as creating a
new column that adds the values in two other columns.
* An example of the `CustomMappingEstimator` can be found
[here](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/blob/d68388a1c9994a5b429b194b64b2b0782834cb78/test/Microsoft.ML.Tests/Transformers/CustomMappingTests.cs#L55).

* Consolidated several API concepts in `MLContext`
[#1252](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/pull/1252)

* `MLContext` replaces `LocalEnvironment` and `ConsoleEnvironment` but
also includes properties for ML tasks like
`BinaryClassification`/`Regression`, various transforms/trainers, and
evaluation. More information can be found in
[#1098](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/issues/1098).
* Example usage can be found
[here](https://github.com/dotnet/machinelearning/blob/d68388a1c9994a5b429b194b64b2b0782834cb78/docs/code/MlNetCookBook.md).

* Open sourced [NimbusML](https://github.com/microsoft/nimbusml): experimental
Python bindings for ML.NET.

* NimbusML makes it easy for data scientists to train models in Python and
hand them off to .NET developers to include in their apps and services
using ML.NET.
* NimbusML components easily integrate into
[scikit-learn](http://scikit-learn.org/stable/) pipelines.
* Note that NimbusML is an experimental project without the same support
level as ML.NET.
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Did we want a "Changes" section? Perhaps listing the renamed/re-name-spaced components. If we're lucky, we'll help a single dev, lucky enough to read the note, avoid a few minutes of confusion.


### Acknowledgements

Shoutout to [dzban2137](https://github.com/dzban2137),
[beneyal](https://github.com/beneyal),
[pkulikov](https://github.com/pkulikov),
[amiteshenoy](https://github.com/amiteshenoy),
[DAXaholic](https://github.com/DAXaholic),
[Racing5372](https://github.com/Racing5372),
[ThePiranha](https://github.com/ThePiranha),
[helloguo](https://github.com/helloguo),
[elbruno](https://github.com/elbruno),
[harshsaver](https://github.com/harshsaver),
[f1x3d](https://github.com/f1x3d), [rauhs](https://github.com/rauhs),
[nihitb06](https://github.com/nihitb06),
[nandaleite](https://github.com/nandaleite),
[timitoc](https://github.com/timitoc),
[feiyun0112](https://github.com/feiyun0112),
[Pielgrin](https://github.com/Pielgrin),
[malik97160](https://github.com/malik97160),
[Niladri24dutta](https://github.com/Niladri24dutta),
[suhailsinghbains](https://github.com/suhailsinghbains),
[terop](https://github.com/terop), [Matei13](https://github.com/Matei13),
[JorgeAndd](https://github.com/JorgeAndd), and the ML.NET team for their
contributions as part of this release!