Professional-Machine-Learning-Engineer Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Question and Answers

 This answer is correct because it allows AutoML Tables to handle the time signal in the data and split the data accordingly. This ensures that the model is trained on the historical data and evaluated on the more recent data, which is consistent with the prediction task. AutoML Tables can automatically detect and handle temporal features in the data, such as date, time, and duration. By specifying the Time column, AutoML Tables can also perform time-series forecasting and use the time signal to generate additional features, such as seasonality and trend. References:

[AutoML Tables: Preparing your training data]

[AutoML Tables: Time-series forecasting]

A fairness metric is a way to measure how well a machine learning model treats different groups of customers, such as by sex or age. A common fairness metric is accuracy, which is the proportion of correct predictions among all predictions. Accuracy across the sensitive features means calculating the accuracy for each group separately, and then comparing them. For example, if the model has 90% accuracy for male customers and 80% accuracy for female customers, there is a 10% accuracy gap that indicates potential bias against female customers.

To investigate and mitigate potential bias, it is important to define a fairness metric and evaluate it on a test set. A test set is a subset of the data that is not used for training the model, but only for evaluating its performance. By joining the test set predictions with the sensitive features, you can calculate the fairness metric and see if it meets your requirements. For example, you may require that the accuracy gap between any two groups is less than 5%. If the fairness metric does not meet your requirements, you may need to adjust the model or the data to reduce bias.

Option A is not the best answer because excluding the sensitive features and any meaningfully correlated features may not eliminate bias. For example, if salary is correlated with sex, and salary is also a predictive feature for the target variable, excluding both features may reduce the model accuracy and still leave some residual bias. Moreover, excluding features based on correlation may not capture the complex interactions and dependencies among the features that may affect bias.

Option B is not the best answer because using the global attribution values for each feature of the model may not reflect the individual-level impact of the features on the predictions. Global attribution values are calculated by averaging the attribution values across all the data points, and they indicate how important each feature is for the overall model performance. However, they do not show how each feature affects each customer’s prediction, which may vary depending on the values of the other features. For example, sex may have a low global attribution value, but it may have a high impact on some customers’ predictions, especially if it interacts with other features such as salary or age.

Option C is not the best answer because discarding the model and training the model again without a feature based on a single customer’s attribution value may not be a robust or scalable way to mitigate bias. Attribution values are calculated by measuring how much each feature contributes to the prediction for a given data point, and they indicate how sensitive the prediction is to the feature value. However, they do not show how the feature affects the overall fairness metric or the model accuracy. For example, sex may have a high attribution value for a customer, but it may not affect the accuracy gap between the groups. Moreover, discarding and retraining the model based on a single customer’s attribution value may not be feasible if there are many customers with high attribution values for different features.

 Transfer learning is a technique that leverages the knowledge and weights of a pre-trained model and adapts them to a new task or domain1. Transfer learning can save time and resources by avoiding training a model from scratch, and can also improve the performance and generalization of the model by using a larger and more diverse dataset2. AI Platform provides several established text classification models that can be used for transfer learning, such as BERT, ALBERT, or XLNet3. These models are based on state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques and can handle various text classification tasks, such as sentiment analysis, topic classification, or spam detection4. By using one of these models on AI Platform, you can customize the model’s code, serving, and deployment, and use Kubeflow pipelines for the ML platform. Therefore, using an established text classification model on AI Platform to perform transfer learning is the best option for this use case.

References:

Transfer Learning - Machine Learning’s Next Frontier

A Comprehensive Hands-on Guide to Transfer Learning with Real-World Applications in Deep Learning

Text classification models

Text Classification with Pre-trained Models in TensorFlow

This answer is correct because it uses a regression model to estimate the number of passengers at each shuttle station, which is a continuous variable. A tree-based regression model can handle both numerical and categorical features, such as the time of day, the location of the station, and the weather conditions. Based on the predicted number of passengers, the organization can dispatch a shuttle that has enough capacity and provide a map that shows the required stops. This way, the organization can optimize the shuttle service route and reduce the waiting time and fuel consumption. References:

[Tree-based regression models]

 The best option for continuing experimenting and iterating on your pipeline to improve model performance, using Cloud Build for CI/CD, and deploying new pipelines into production quickly and easily, is to set up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment. After a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, deploy the pipeline to production. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Cloud Build to automate, monitor, and manage your pipeline development and deployment workflow. Cloud Build is a service that can create and run continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines on Google Cloud. Cloud Build can build your source code, run unit tests, and deploy built artifacts to various Google Cloud services, such as Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Endpoints, and Artifact Registry. A CI/CD pipeline is a workflow that can automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software. A CI/CD pipeline can help you improve the quality and reliability of your software, accelerate the development and delivery cycle, and reduce the manual effort and errors. A pre-production environment is an environment that can simulate the production environment, but is isolated from the real users and data. A pre-production environment can help you test and validate your software before deploying it to production, and catch any bugs or issues that may affect the user experience or the system performance. By setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, you can ensure that your pipeline code is consistent and error-free, and that your pipeline artifacts are compatible and functional. After a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, you can deploy the pipeline to production, which is the environment where your software is accessible and usable by the real users and data. By deploying the pipeline to production after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, you can minimize the chance that the new pipeline implementations will break in production, and ensure that your software meets the user expectations and requirements1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code, and if the tests are successful, using the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry and upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the manual effort and errors. The Google Cloud console is a web-based user interface that can help you access and manage various Google Cloud services, such as Artifact Registry and Vertex AI Pipelines. Artifact Registry is a service that can store and manage your container images and other artifacts on Google Cloud. Artifact Registry can help you upload and organize your container images, and track the image versions and metadata. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that can orchestrate machine learning workflows using Vertex AI. Vertex AI Pipelines can run preprocessing and training steps on custom Docker images, and evaluate, deploy, and monitor the machine learning model. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code, and if the tests are successful, using the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry and upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the manual effort and errors. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, use the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry, and use the Google Cloud console to upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines. Moreover, this option would not use a pre-production environment to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, which could increase the chance that the new pipeline implementations will break in production1.

Option B: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, running unit tests in the pre-production environment, and if the tests are successful, deploying the pipeline to production would not allow you to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, and could cause errors or poor performance. A unit test is a type of test that can verify the functionality and correctness of a small and isolated unit of code, such as a function or a class. A unit test can help you debug and improve your code quality, and catch any bugs or issues that may affect the code logic or output. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, running unit tests in the pre-production environment, and if the tests are successful, deploying the pipeline to production would not allow you to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, deploy the built artifacts to the pre-production environment, run the unit tests in the pre-production environment, and deploy the pipeline to production. Moreover, this option would not run the pipeline in the pre-production environment, which could prevent you from testing and validating the pipeline functionality and compatibility, and catching any bugs or issues that may affect the pipeline workflow or output1.

Option D: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, rebuilding the source code, and deploying the artifacts to production would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the complexity and cost of the pipeline development and deployment. Rebuilding the source code is a process that can recompile and repackage the source code into executable artifacts, such as container images and pipeline files. Rebuilding the source code can help you incorporate any changes or updates that may have occurred in the source code, and ensure that the artifacts are consistent and up-to-date. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, rebuilding the source code, and deploying the artifacts to production would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the complexity and cost of the pipeline development and deployment. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, deploy the built artifacts to the pre-production environment, run the pipeline in the pre-production environment, rebuild the source code, and deploy the artifacts to production. Moreover, this option would increase the pipeline development and deployment time, as rebuilding the source code can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process1.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 3: MLOps

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.2 Automating ML workflows

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.4: Automating ML Workflows

Cloud Build

Vertex AI Pipelines

Artifact Registry

Pre-production environment

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “design, build, and productionalize ML models to solve business challenges using Google Cloud technologies”. Dataproc2 is a fully managed, fast, and easy-to-use service for running Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop clusters on Google Cloud. Dataproc supports PySpark workloads and provides a simple way to migrate your existing Spark jobs to the cloud. You can create a Dataproc cluster with a few clicks or commands, and run your PySpark jobs on it. You can also use Vertex AI Workbench3, a managed notebook service, to create and run PySpark notebooks on Dataproc clusters. This way, you can interactively develop and test your PySpark code on the cloud. Therefore, option C is the best way to build a proof of concept to migrate one data science job to Google Cloud with minimal cost and effort. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

Dataproc

Vertex AI Workbench

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

Batch prediction is the process of using an ML model to make predictions on a large set of data points. Batch prediction is suitable for scenarios where the predictions are not time-sensitive and can be done in batches, such as digitizing scanned customer forms at the end of each day. Batch prediction can also handle large volumes of data and scale up or down the resources as needed. AI Platform provides a batch prediction service that allows users to submit a job with their TensorFlow model and input data stored in Cloud Storage, and receive the output predictions in Cloud Storage as well. This service requires minimal manual intervention and can be automated with Cloud Scheduler or Cloud Functions. Therefore, using the batch prediction functionality of AI Platform is the best option for this use case.

References:

Batch prediction overview

Using batch prediction

Representation transformation (normalization) is a technique that transforms the features to be on a similar scale, such as between 0 and 1, or with mean 0 and standard deviation 1. This technique can improve the performance and training stability of the neural network model, as it can prevent the gradient optimization from being dominated by features with larger scales, and help the model converge faster and better. There are different types of normalization techniques, such as min-max scaling, z-score scaling, log scaling, etc. You can learn more about normalization techniques from the following web search results:

Normalization | Machine Learning | Google for Developers

NORMALIZATION TECHNIQUES IN TRAINING DNNS: METHODOLOGY, ANALYSIS AND …

Visualizing Different Normalization Techniques | by Dibya … - Medium

Data Normalization Techniques: Easy to Advanced (& the Best)

 Cloud Storage is a scalable and cost-effective storage service for any type of data. By storing image files in Cloud Storage, you can access them from anywhere and avoid the overhead of managing your own storage infrastructure. However, accessing image files directly from Cloud Storage can be slow and inefficient, especially for large-scale training. A better option is to use serialized records, such as TFRecord or Apache Avro, which are binary formats that store multiple images and their labels in a single file. Serialized records can improve the data throughput and reduce the network latency, as well as enable data compression and sharding. You can use TensorFlow or Apache Beam APIs to create and read serialized records from Cloud Storage. This solution requires minimal code changes and can speed up your training time significantly. References:

Cloud Storage | Google Cloud

TFRecord and tf.Example | TensorFlow Core

Apache Avro 1.10.2 Specification

Using Apache Beam with Cloud Storage | Cloud Storage

Option A is incorrect because creating a collaborative filtering system that recommends articles to a user based on the user’s past behavior is not the best approach to suggest articles that are similar to the articles they are currently reading. Collaborative filtering is a method of recommendation that uses the ratings or preferences of other users to predict the preferences of a target user1. However, this method does not consider the content or features of the articles, and may not be able to find articles that are similar in terms of topic, style, or sentiment.

Option B is correct because encoding all articles into vectors using word2vec, and building a model that returns articles based on vector similarity is a suitable approach to suggest articles that are similar to the articles they are currently reading. Word2vec is a technique that learns low-dimensional and dense representations of words from a large corpus of text, such that words that are semantically similar have similar vectors2. By applying word2vec to the articles, we can obtain vector representations of the articles that capture their meaning and usage. Then, we can use a similarity measure, such as cosine similarity, to find articles that have similar vectors to the current article3.

Option C is incorrect because building a logistic regression model for each user that predicts whether an article should be recommended to a user is not a feasible approach to suggest articles that are similar to the articles they are currently reading. Logistic regression is a supervised learning method that models the probability of a binary outcome (such as recommend or not) based on some input features (such as user profile or article content)4. However, this method requires a large amount of labeled data for each user, which may not be available or scalable. Moreover, this method does not directly measure the similarity between articles, but rather the likelihood of a user’s preference.

Option D is incorrect because manually labeling a few hundred articles, and then training an SVM classifier based on the manually classified articles that categorizes additional articles into their respective categories is not an effective approach to suggest articles that are similar to the articles they are currently reading. SVM (support vector machine) is a supervised learning method that finds a hyperplane that separates the data into different classes (such as news categories) with the maximum margin5. However, this method also requires a large amount of labeled data, which may be costly and time-consuming to obtain. Moreover, this method does not account for the fine-grained similarity between articles within the same category, or the cross-category similarity between articles from different categories.

References:

Collaborative filtering

Word2vec

Cosine similarity

Logistic regression

SVM

Option A is incorrect because using AI Platform to run distributed training jobs with checkpoints does not reduce the compute costs, but rather increases them by using more resources and storing the checkpoints.

Option B is incorrect because using AI Platform to run distributed training jobs without checkpoints may reduce the compute costs, but it also risks losing the progress of the training if the job fails or is interrupted.

Option C is correct because migrating to training with Kubeflow on Google Kubernetes Engine, and using preemptible VMs with checkpoints can reduce the compute costs significantly by using cheaper and more scalable resources, while also preserving the state of the training with checkpoints.

Option D is incorrect because using preemptible VMs without checkpoints may reduce the compute costs, but it also risks losing the training progress if the VMs are preempted.

References:

Kubeflow on Google Cloud

Using preemptible VMs and GPUs

Saving and loading models

Explanation: TensorFlow Extended (TFX) is a platform for building end-to-end machine learning pipelines using TensorFlow. TFX provides a set of components that can be orchestrated using either the TFX SDK or Kubeflow Pipelines. TFX components can handle different aspects of the pipeline, such as data ingestion, data validation, data transformation, model training, model evaluation, model serving, and more. TFX components can also leverage other Google Cloud services, such as BigQuery, Dataflow, and Vertex AI.

Why not A: Using the Kubeflow Pipelines SDK to implement the pipeline is a valid option, but using the BigQueryJobOp component to run the preprocessing script is not optimal. This would require writing and maintaining a separate SQL script for data transformation, which could introduce inconsistencies and errors. It would also make it harder to reuse the same preprocessing logic for both training and serving.

Why not B: Using the Kubeflow Pipelines SDK to implement the pipeline is a valid option, but using the DataflowPythonJobOp component to preprocess the data is not optimal. This would require writing and maintaining a separate Python script for data transformation, which could introduce inconsistencies and errors. It would also make it harder to reuse the same preprocessing logic for both training and serving.

Why not D: Using the TensorFlow Extended SDK to implement the pipeline is a valid option, but implementing the preprocessing steps as part of the input_fn of the model is not optimal. This would make the preprocessing logic tightly coupled with the model code, which could reduce modularity and flexibility. It would also make it harder to reuse the same preprocessing logic for both training and serving.

Cloud Build is a service that executes your builds on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. Cloud Build can import source code from Cloud Source Repositories, Cloud Storage, GitHub, or Bitbucket, execute a build to your specifications, and produce artifacts such as Docker containers or Java archives1

Cloud Build allows you to set up automated triggers that start a build when changes are pushed to a source code repository. You can configure triggers to filter the changes based on the branch, tag, or file path2

To automate the execution of unit tests for a Kubeflow Pipeline that require custom libraries, you can use Cloud Build to set an automated trigger to execute the unit tests when changes are pushed to your development branch in Cloud Source Repositories. You can specify the steps of the build in a YAML or JSON file, such as installing the custom libraries, running the unit tests, and reporting the results. You can also use Cloud Build to build and deploy the Kubeflow Pipeline components if the unit tests pass3

The other options are not recommended or feasible. Writing a script that sequentially performs the push to your development branch and executes the unit tests on Cloud Run is not a good practice, as it does not leverage the benefits of Cloud Build and its integration with Cloud Source Repositories. Setting up a Cloud Logging sink to a Pub/Sub topic that captures interactions with Cloud Source Repositories and using a Pub/Sub trigger for Cloud Run or Cloud Function to execute the unit tests is unnecessarily complex and inefficient, as it adds extra steps and latency to the process. Cloud Run and Cloud Function are also not designed for executing unit tests, as they have limitations on the memory, CPU, and execution time45

References: 1: Cloud Build overview 2: Creating and managing build triggers 3: Building and deploying Kubeflow Pipelines using Cloud Build 4: Cloud Run documentation 5: Cloud Functions documentation

 Entity extraction is a natural language processing (NLP) task that involves identifying and extracting specific types of information from text, such as names, dates, locations, etc. Entity extraction can help you analyze a corpus of recipes and extract each ingredient and cookware mentioned in them. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and managing machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. It provides a service for AutoML entity extraction, which allows you to create and train custom entity extraction models without writing any code. You can use Vertex AI to create a text dataset for entity extraction, and label your data with two entities: “ingredient” and “cookware”. You need to label at least 200 examples of each entity type to train an AutoML entity extraction model. You can also use a holdout dataset to evaluate the performance of your model, such as precision, recall, and F1-score. This solution can help you build a machine learning model to scan a corpus of recipes and extract each ingredient and cookware mentioned in them, and use the results to help users with meal planning. References:

AutoML Entity Extraction | Vertex AI

Preparing data for AutoML Entity Extraction | Vertex AI

To organize the artifacts for dozens of pipelines, you should store the parameters in Vertex ML Metadata, store the models’ source code in GitHub, and store the models’ binaries in Cloud Storage. This option has the following advantages:

Vertex ML Metadata is a service that helps you track and manage the metadata of your ML workflows, such as datasets, models, metrics, and parameters1. It can also help you with data lineage, model versioning, and model performance monitoring2.

GitHub is a popular platform for hosting and collaborating on code repositories. It can help you manage the source code of your models, as well as the configuration files, scripts, and notebooks that are part of your ML pipelines3.

Cloud Storage is a scalable and durable object storage service that can store any type of data, including model binaries4. It can also integrate with other services, such as Vertex AI, Cloud Functions, and Cloud Run, to enable easy deployment and serving of your models5.

References:

1: Introduction to Vertex ML Metadata | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

2: Manage metadata for ML workflows | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

3: GitHub - Where the world builds software

4: Cloud Storage | Google Cloud

5: Deploying models | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

 Traffic splitting is a feature of Vertex AI that allows you to distribute the prediction requests among multiple models or model versions within the same endpoint. You can specify the percentage of traffic that each model or model version receives, and change it at any time. Traffic splitting can help you test the new model in production without creating a new endpoint or a separate service. You can deploy the new model to the existing Vertex AI endpoint, and use traffic splitting to send 5% of production traffic to the new model. You can monitor the end-user metrics, such as listening time, to compare the performance of the new model and the previous model. If the end-user metrics improve between models over time, you can gradually increase the percentage of production traffic sent to the new model. This solution can help you test the new model in production while minimizing complexity and cost. References:

Traffic splitting | Vertex AI

Deploying models to endpoints | Vertex AI

A caching layer is essential to reduce database access time, meeting the <100ms requirement. Caches store high-frequency, low-latency queries in memory, minimizing access delays caused by database lookups. While AlloyDB (Option B) provides performance benefits, a caching layer is more efficient and cost-effective for this purpose. BigQuery ML (Option A) is less ideal for real-time personalized responses due to access speed, and vector embeddings (Option C) are not needed unless semantic search is a requirement.

=================

Option A is incorrect because it does not separate the training dataset into two tables based on the features, which is necessary to train the two models separately and accurately.

Option B is incorrect because it does not separate the training dataset into two tables based on the features, and because it uses the same monitoring-config-from parameter for both models, which would not account for the different feature selections.

Option C is incorrect because it deploys the models to two separate endpoints, which would increase the management effort and complexity of the pipeline.

Option D is correct because it separates the training dataset into two tables based on the features, which would enable the two models to be trained separately and accurately. It also deploys both models to the same endpoint, which would simplify the pipeline and reduce the management effort. It also submits a Vertex Al Model Monitoring job with a monitoring-config-from parameter that accounts for the model IDs and training datasets, which would enable the skew detection to work properly for each model.

According to the web search results, Cloud Build1 is a service that executes your builds on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. Cloud Build can import source code from Cloud Source Repositories2, Cloud Storage, GitHub, Bitbucket, or any publicly hosted Git repository. Cloud Build allows you to create and manage build triggers, which are automated workflows that run whenever a code change is pushed to your source repository. You can use Cloud Build triggers to automatically retrain your ML models whenever there is any modification of the code. Therefore, option B is the best way to set up the CI pipeline for the given use case, as it allows you to configure a Cloud Build trigger with the event set as “Push to a branch”, which means the trigger will run whenever a new commit is pushed to a specific branch of your source repository. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

Cloud Build

Cloud Source Repositories

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “explain the predictions of a trained model”. Vertex AI provides feature attributions using Shapley Values, a cooperative game theory algorithm that assigns credit to each feature in a model for a particular outcome2. Feature attributions can help you understand how the model calculates the predictions and debug or optimize the model accordingly. You can use AutoML for Tabular Data to generate and query local feature attributions3. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

Feature attributions for classification and regression

AutoML for Tabular Data

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

 Vertex AI Experiments is a managed service that allows you to track, compare, and manage experiments with Vertex AI. You can use Vertex AI Experiments to record the parameters, metrics, and artifacts of each pipeline run, and compare them in a graphical interface. Vertex AI TensorBoard is a tool that lets you visualize the metrics of your models, such as accuracy, loss, and learning curves. By logging metrics to Vertex ML Metadata and using Vertex AI Experiments and TensorBoard, you can easily collaborate with your team and find the best model configuration for your problem. References: Vertex AI Pipelines: Metrics visualization and run comparison using the KFP SDK, Track, compare, manage experiments with Vertex AI Experiments, Vertex AI Pipelines

 The best option for splitting the data between the training, validation, and test sets, using a managed tabular dataset in Vertex AI that contains sales data from three different stores, is to use Vertex AI default data split. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to automatically and randomly split your data into the three sets by percentage. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. Vertex AI can support various types of models, such as linear regression, logistic regression, k-means clustering, matrix factorization, and deep neural networks. Vertex AI can also provide various tools and services for data analysis, model development, model deployment, model monitoring, and model governance. A default data split is a data split method that is provided by Vertex AI, and does not require any user input or configuration. A default data split can help you split your data into the training, validation, and test sets by using a random sampling method, and assign a fixed percentage of the data to each set. A default data split can help you simplify the data split process, and works well in most cases. A training set is a subset of the data that is used to train the model, and adjust the model parameters. A training set can help you learn the relationship between the input features and the target variable, and optimize the model performance. A validation set is a subset of the data that is used to validate the model, and tune the model hyperparameters. A validation set can help you evaluate the model performance on unseen data, and avoid overfitting or underfitting. A test set is a subset of the data that is used to test the model, and provide the final evaluation metrics. A test set can help you assess the model performance on new data, and measure the generalization ability of the model. By using Vertex AI default data split, you can split your data into the training, validation, and test sets by using a random sampling method, and assign the following percentages of the data to each set1:

The other options are not as good as option B, for the following reasons:

Option A: Using Vertex AI manual split, using the store name feature to assign one store for each set would not allow you to split your data into representative and balanced sets, and could cause errors or poor performance. A manual split is a data split method that allows you to control how your data is split into sets, by using the ml_use label or the data filter expression. A manual split can help you customize the data split logic, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. A store name feature is a feature that indicates the name of the store where the sales data was collected. A store name feature can help you identify the source of the data, and group the data by store. However, using Vertex AI manual split, using the store name feature to assign one store for each set would not allow you to split your data into representative and balanced sets, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and configure the ml_use label or the data filter expression, and assign one store for each set. Moreover, this option would not ensure that the data in each set has the same distribution and characteristics as the data in the whole dataset, which could prevent you from learning the general pattern of the data, and cause bias or variance in the model2.

Option C: Using Vertex AI chronological split and specifying the sales timestamp feature as the time variable would not allow you to split your data into representative and balanced sets, and could cause errors or poor performance. A chronological split is a data split method that allows you to split your data into sets based on the order of the data. A chronological split can help you preserve the temporal dependency and sequence of the data, and avoid data leakage. A sales timestamp feature is a feature that indicates the date and time when the sales data was collected. A sales timestamp feature can help you track the changes and trends of the data over time, and capture the seasonality and cyclicality of the data. However, using Vertex AI chronological split and specifying the sales timestamp feature as the time variable would not allow you to split your data into representative and balanced sets, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and configure the time variable, and split the data by the order of the time variable. Moreover, this option would not ensure that the data in each set has the same distribution and characteristics as the data in the whole dataset, which could prevent you from learning the general pattern of the data, and cause bias or variance in the model3.

Option D: Using Vertex AI random split, assigning 70% of the rows to the training set, 10% to the validation set, and 20% to the test set would not allow you to use the default data split method that is provided by Vertex AI, and could increase the complexity and cost of the data split process. A random split is a data split method that allows you to split your data into sets by using a random sampling method, and assign a custom percentage of the data to each set. A random split can help you split your data into representative and balanced sets, and avoid data leakage. However, using Vertex AI random split, assigning 70% of the rows to the training set, 10% to the validation set, and 20% to the test set would not allow you to use the default data split method that is provided by Vertex AI, and could increase the complexity and cost of the data split process. You would need to write code, create and configure the random split method, and assign the custom percentages to each set. Moreover, this option would not use the default data split method that is provided by Vertex AI, which can simplify the data split process, and works well in most cases1.

References:

About data splits for AutoML models | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Manual split for unstructured data

Mathematical split

Option A is incorrect because migrating your model to TensorFlow, and training it using Vertex AI Training, is not the easiest way to improve the model’s training time. TensorFlow is a framework that allows you to create and train ML models using Python or other languages. Vertex AI Training is a service that allows you to train and optimize ML models using built-in algorithms or custom containers. However, this option requires significant code changes, as TensorFlow and scikit-learn have different APIs and functionalities. Moreover, this option does not leverage the parallelism or the scalability of the cloud, as it only uses a single instance.

Option B is incorrect because training your model in a distributed mode using multiple Compute Engine VMs, is not the most convenient way to improve the model’s training time. Compute Engine is a service that allows you to create and manage virtual machines that run on Google Cloud. You can use Compute Engine to run your scikit-learn model in a distributed mode, by using libraries such as Dask or Joblib. However, this option requires more effort and resources than option D, as it involves creating and configuring the VMs, installing and maintaining the libraries, and writing and running the distributed code.

Option C is incorrect because training your model with DLVM images on Vertex AI, and ensuring that your code utilizes NumPy and SciPy internal methods whenever possible, is not the most effective way to improve the model’s training time. DLVM (Deep Learning Virtual Machine) images are preconfigured VM images that include popular ML frameworks and tools, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn1. You can use DLVM images on Vertex AI to train your scikit-learn model, by using a custom container. NumPy and SciPy are libraries that provide numerical and scientific computing functionalities for Python. You can use NumPy and SciPy internal methods to optimize your scikit-learn code, as they are faster and more efficient than pure Python code2. However, this option does not leverage the parallelism or the scalability of the cloud, as it only uses a single instance. Moreover, this option may not have a significant impact on the training time, as scikit-learn already relies on NumPy and SciPy for most of its operations3.

Option D is correct because training your model using Vertex AI Training with GPUs, is the best way to improve the model’s training time. A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is a hardware accelerator that can perform parallel computations faster than a CPU (Central Processing Unit)4. Vertex AI Training is a service that allows you to train and optimize ML models using built-in algorithms or custom containers. You can use Vertex AI Training with GPUs to train your scikit-learn model, by using a custom container and specifying the accelerator type and count5. By using Vertex AI Training with GPUs, you can leverage the parallelism and the scalability of the cloud, and speed up the training process significantly, without changing your code.

References:

DLVM images

NumPy and SciPy

scikit-learn dependencies

GPU overview

Vertex AI Training with GPUs

[scikit-learn overview]

[TensorFlow overview]

[Compute Engine overview]

[Dask overview]

[Joblib overview]

[Vertex AI Training overview]

Vertex AI Model Registry is a central repository where you can manage the lifecycle of your ML models1. You can import models from various sources, such as BigQuery ML, AutoML, or custom models, and assign them to different versions and aliases1. You can also deploy models to endpoints, which are resources that provide a service URL for online prediction2.

By importing the new model to the same Vertex AI Model Registry as a different version of the existing model, you can keep track of the model versions and compare their performance metrics1. You can also use aliases to label the model versions according to their readiness for production, such as default or staging1.

By deploying the new model to the same Vertex AI endpoint as the existing model, you can use traffic splitting to gradually shift the production traffic from the old model to the new model2. Traffic splitting is a feature that allows you to specify the percentage of prediction requests that each deployed model in an endpoint should handle2. This way, you can minimize the impact to the existing and future model users, and monitor the performance of the new model over time2.

The other options are not suitable for your scenario, because they either require creating a separate endpoint or a Cloud Run service, which would increase the complexity and maintenance of your deployment, or they do not allow you to use traffic splitting, which would create a sudden change in your prediction results. References:

Introduction to Vertex AI Model Registry | Google Cloud

Deploy a model to an endpoint | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Option A is incorrect because training local surrogate models to explain individual predictions is not a feature of Vertex Explainable AI, but rather a general technique for interpreting black-box models. Local surrogate models are simpler models that approximate the behavior of the original model around a specific input1.

Option B is correct because configuring sampled Shapley explanations on Vertex Explainable AI is a way to explain the difference between the actual prediction and the average prediction for a given input. Sampled Shapley explanations are based on the Shapley value, which is a game-theoretic concept that measures how much each feature contributes to the prediction2. Vertex Explainable AI supports sampled Shapley explanations for tabular data, such as customer churn3.

Option C is incorrect because configuring integrated gradients explanations on Vertex Explainable AI is not suitable for explaining the difference between the actual prediction and the average prediction for a given input. Integrated gradients explanations are based on the idea of computing the gradients of the prediction with respect to the input features along a path from a baseline input to the actual input4. Vertex Explainable AI supports integrated gradients explanations for image and text data, but not for tabular data3.

Option D is incorrect because measuring the effect of each feature as the weight of the feature multiplied by the feature value is not a valid way to explain the difference between the actual prediction and the average prediction for a given input. This method assumes that the model is linear and additive, which is not the case for an ensemble of trees and neural networks. Moreover, this method does not account for the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model5.

References:

Local surrogate models

Shapley value

Vertex Explainable AI overview

Integrated gradients

Feature importance

AutoML Edge is a service that allows you to train and deploy custom image classification models for mobile devices12. It supports exporting models as Core ML files, which are compatible with iOS applications3.

Using a Core ML model directly on the device eliminates the need for network requests and reduces prediction latency. It also minimizes the cost of serving predictions, as there is no need to pay for cloud resources or network bandwidth.

Option A is incorrect because sending batch requests during prediction does not reduce latency, as the requests still need to be processed by the cloud service. It also incurs more cost than using a local model on the device.

Option C is incorrect because TFLite models are not compatible with iOS applications. TFLite models are designed for Android and other platforms that support TensorFlow Lite4.

Option D is incorrect because exposing the model as a Vertex AI endpoint requires network requests and cloud resources, which increase latency and cost. It also does not leverage the benefits of AutoML Edge, which is optimized for mobile devices.

The best option for implementing the processing steps so that they run at serving time, minimizing code changes and infrastructure maintenance, and deploying the model into production as quickly as possible, is to use the Predictor interface to implement a custom prediction routine. Build the custom container, upload the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy it to a Vertex AI endpoint. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to serve your XGBoost model with minimal effort and customization. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. Vertex AI can deploy a trained XGBoost model to an online prediction endpoint, which can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. A custom prediction routine (CPR) is a Python script that defines the logic for preprocessing the input data, running the prediction, and postprocessing the output data. A CPR can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. A CPR can also help you minimize the code changes, as you only need to write a few functions to implement the prediction logic. A Predictor interface is a class that inherits from the base class aiplatform.Predictor, and implements the abstract methods predict() and preprocess(). A Predictor interface can help you create a CPR by defining the preprocessing and prediction logic for your model. A container image is a package that contains the model, the CPR, and the dependencies. A container image can help you standardize and simplify the deployment process, as you only need to upload the container image to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy it to Vertex AI Endpoints. By using the Predictor interface to implement a CPR, building the custom container, uploading the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint, you can implement the processing steps so that they run at serving time, minimize code changes and infrastructure maintenance, and deploy the model into production as quickly as possible1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Using FastAPI to implement an HTTP server, creating a Docker image that runs your HTTP server, and deploying it on your organization’s GKE cluster would require more skills and steps than using the Predictor interface to implement a CPR, building the custom container, uploading the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint. FastAPI is a framework for building web applications and APIs in Python. FastAPI can help you implement an HTTP server that can handle prediction requests and responses, and perform data preprocessing and postprocessing. A Docker image is a package that contains the model, the HTTP server, and the dependencies. A Docker image can help you standardize and simplify the deployment process, as you only need to build and run the Docker image. GKE is a service that can create and manage Kubernetes clusters on Google Cloud. GKE can help you deploy and scale your Docker image on Google Cloud, and provide high availability and performance. However, using FastAPI to implement an HTTP server, creating a Docker image that runs your HTTP server, and deploying it on your organization’s GKE cluster would require more skills and steps than using the Predictor interface to implement a CPR, building the custom container, uploading the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint. You would need to write code, create and configure the HTTP server, build and test the Docker image, create and manage the GKE cluster, and deploy and monitor the Docker image. Moreover, this option would not leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI, which can provide online prediction natively integrated with Google Cloud services2.

Option B: Using FastAPI to implement an HTTP server, creating a Docker image that runs your HTTP server, uploading the image to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint would require more skills and steps than using the Predictor interface to implement a CPR, building the custom container, uploading the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint. FastAPI is a framework for building web applications and APIs in Python. FastAPI can help you implement an HTTP server that can handle prediction requests and responses, and perform data preprocessing and postprocessing. A Docker image is a package that contains the model, the HTTP server, and the dependencies. A Docker image can help you standardize and simplify the deployment process, as you only need to build and run the Docker image. Vertex AI Model Registry is a service that can store and manage your machine learning models on Google Cloud. Vertex AI Model Registry can help you upload and organize your Docker image, and track the model versions and metadata. Vertex AI Endpoints is a service that can provide online prediction for your machine learning models on Google Cloud. Vertex AI Endpoints can help you deploy your Docker image to an online prediction endpoint, which can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. However, using FastAPI to implement an HTTP server, creating a Docker image that runs your HTTP server, uploading the image to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint would require more skills and steps than using the Predictor interface to implement a CPR, building the custom container, uploading the container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying it to a Vertex AI endpoint. You would need to write code, create and configure the HTTP server, build and test the Docker image, upload the Docker image to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy the Docker image to Vertex AI Endpoints. Moreover, this option would not leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI, which can provide online prediction natively integrated with Google Cloud services2.

Option D: Using the XGBoost prebuilt serving container when importing the trained model into Vertex AI, deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, working with the backend engineers to implement the pre- and postprocessing steps in the Golang backend service would not allow you to implement the processing steps so that they run at serving time, and could increase the code changes and infrastructure maintenance. A XGBoost prebuilt serving container is a container image that is provided by Google Cloud, and contains the XGBoost framework and the dependencies. A XGBoost prebuilt serving container can help you deploy a XGBoost model without writing any code, but it also limits your customization options. A XGBoost prebuilt serving container can only handle standard data formats, such as JSON or CSV, and cannot perform any preprocessing or postprocessing on the input or output data. If your input data requires any transformation or normalization before running the prediction, you cannot use a XGBoost prebuilt serving container. A Golang backend service is a service that is implemented in Golang, a programming language that can be used for web development and system programming. A Golang backend service can help you handle the prediction requests and responses from the frontend, and communicate with the Vertex AI endpoint. However, using the XGBoost prebuilt serving container when importing the trained model into Vertex AI, deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, working with the backend engineers to implement the pre- and postprocessing steps in the Golang backend service would not allow you to implement the processing steps so that they run at serving time, and could increase the code changes and infrastructure maintenance. You would need to write code, import the trained model into Vertex AI, deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, implement the pre- and postprocessing steps in the Golang backend service, and test and monitor the Golang backend service. Moreover, this option would not leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI, which can provide online prediction natively integrated with Google Cloud services2.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 2: Serving ML Predictions

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.1 Deploying ML models to production

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.2: Serving ML Predictions

Custom prediction routines

Using pre-built containers for prediction

Using custom containers for prediction

 Vertex AI Workbench is an integrated development environment (IDE) that allows you to create and run Jupyter notebooks on Google Cloud. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to create and manage machine learning workflows using Vertex AI components. To submit a Vertex AI Pipeline job from a Vertex AI Workbench instance, you need to have the appropriate permissions to access the Vertex AI resources. The Identity and Access Management (IAM) Vertex AI User role is a predefined role that grants the minimum permissions required to use Vertex AI services, such as creating and deploying models, endpoints, and pipelines. By assigning the Vertex AI User role to the Vertex AI Workbench instance, you can ensure that the instance has sufficient permissions to submit a Vertex AI Pipeline job. You can assign the role to the instance by using the Cloud Console, the gcloud command-line tool, or the Cloud IAM API. References: The answer can be verified from official Google Cloud documentation and resources related to Vertex AI Workbench, Vertex AI Pipelines, and IAM.

Vertex AI Workbench | Google Cloud

Vertex AI Pipelines | Google Cloud

Vertex AI roles | Google Cloud

Granting, changing, and revoking access to resources | Google Cloud

Deploying the model on GKE with a custom YAML manifest allows maximum control over infrastructure and latency, aligning with the need for low inference time and internal model use. Vertex AI's one-click deployment (Option A) limits control, and deploying on Vertex AI (Option C) doesn’t allow for as much customization as a GKE setup.

=================

Option A is incorrect because implementing continuous retraining of the model daily using Vertex AI Pipelines is not the most efficient way to prevent prediction drift. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to create and run scalable and portable ML pipelines on Google Cloud1. You can use Vertex AI Pipelines to retrain your model daily using the latest data from the BigQuery table. However, this option may be unnecessary or wasteful, as the data distribution may not change significantly every day, and retraining the model may consume a lot of resources and time. Moreover, this option does not monitor the model performance or detect the prediction drift, which are essential steps for ensuring the quality and reliability of the model.

Option B is correct because adding a model monitoring job where 10% of incoming predictions are sampled 24 hours is the best way to prevent prediction drift. Model monitoring is a service that allows you to track the performance and health of your deployed models over time2. You can use model monitoring to sample a fraction of the incoming predictions and compare them with the ground truth labels, which can be obtained from the BigQuery table or other sources. You can also use model monitoring to compute various metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, or F1-score, and set thresholds or alerts for them. By using model monitoring, you can detect and diagnose the prediction drift, and decide when to retrain or update your model. Sampling 10% of the incoming predictions every 24 hours is a reasonable choice, as it balances the trade-off between the accuracy and the cost of the monitoring job.

Option C is incorrect because adding a model monitoring job where 90% of incoming predictions are sampled 24 hours is not a optimal way to prevent prediction drift. This option has the same advantages as option B, as it uses model monitoring to track the performance and health of the deployed model. However, this option is not cost-effective, as it samples a very large fraction of the incoming predictions, which may incur a lot of storage and processing costs. Moreover, this option may not improve the accuracy of the monitoring job significantly, as sampling 10% of the incoming predictions may already provide a representative sample of the data distribution.

Option D is incorrect because adding a model monitoring job where 10% of incoming predictions are sampled every hour is not a necessary way to prevent prediction drift. This option also has the same advantages as option B, as it uses model monitoring to track the performance and health of the deployed model. However, this option may be excessive, as it samples the incoming predictions too frequently, which may not reflect the actual changes in the data distribution. Moreover, this option may incur more storage and processing costs than option B, as it generates more samples and metrics.

References:

Vertex AI Pipelines documentation

Model monitoring documentation

[Prediction drift]

[TensorFlow Extended documentation]

[BigQuery documentation]

[Vertex AI documentation]

The best option for using Vertex AI Model Monitoring for drift detection and minimizing the cost is to use the features and the feature attributions for monitoring, and set a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 0 than 1. This option allows you to leverage the power and flexibility of Google Cloud to detect feature drift in the input predict requests for custom models, and reduce the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job. Vertex AI Model Monitoring is a service that can track and compare the results of multiple machine learning runs. Vertex AI Model Monitoring can monitor the model’s prediction input data for feature skew and drift. Feature drift occurs when the feature data distribution in production changes over time. If the original training data is not available, you can enable drift detection to monitor your models for feature drift. Vertex AI Model Monitoring uses TensorFlow Data Validation (TFDV) to calculate the distributions and distance scores for each feature, and compares them with a baseline distribution. The baseline distribution is the statistical distribution of the feature’s values in the training data. If the training data is not available, the baseline distribution is calculated from the first 1000 prediction requests that the model receives. If the distance score for a feature exceeds an alerting threshold that you set, Vertex AI Model Monitoring sends you an email alert. However, if you use a custom model, you can also enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift. Feature attribution monitoring analyzes the feature attributions, which are the contributions of each feature to the prediction output. Feature attribution monitoring can help you identify the features that have the most impact on the model performance, and the features that have the most significant drift over time. Feature attribution monitoring can also help you understand the relationship between the features and the prediction output, and the correlation between the features1. The prediction-sampling-rate is a parameter that determines the percentage of prediction requests that are logged and analyzed by the model monitoring job. Using a lower prediction-sampling-rate can reduce the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job, but also the quality and validity of the data. Using a lower prediction-sampling-rate can introduce sampling bias and noise into the data, and make the model monitoring job miss some important features or patterns of the data. However, using a higher prediction-sampling-rate can increase the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job, and also the amount of data that needs to be processed and analyzed. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the prediction-sampling-rate and the cost and accuracy of the model monitoring job, and the optimal prediction-sampling-rate depends on the business objective and the data characteristics2. By using the features and the feature attributions for monitoring, and setting a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 0 than 1, you can use Vertex AI Model Monitoring for drift detection and minimize the cost.

The other options are not as good as option D, for the following reasons:

Option A: Using the features for monitoring and setting a monitoring-frequency value that is higher than the default would not enable feature attribution monitoring, and could increase the cost of the model monitoring job. The monitoring-frequency is a parameter that determines how often the model monitoring job analyzes the logged prediction requests and calculates the distributions and distance scores for each feature. Using a higher monitoring-frequency can increase the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job, but also the computation costs of the model monitoring job. Moreover, using the features for monitoring would not enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift and the model performance1.

Option B: Using the features for monitoring and setting a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 1 than 0 would not enable feature attribution monitoring, and could increase the cost of the model monitoring job. The prediction-sampling-rate is a parameter that determines the percentage of prediction requests that are logged and analyzed by the model monitoring job. Using a higher prediction-sampling-rate can increase the quality and validity of the data, but also the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job. Moreover, using the features for monitoring would not enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift and the model performance12.

Option C: Using the features and the feature attributions for monitoring and setting a monitoring-frequency value that is lower than the default would enable feature attribution monitoring, but could reduce the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job. The monitoring-frequency is a parameter that determines how often the model monitoring job analyzes the logged prediction requests and calculates the distributions and distance scores for each feature. Using a lower monitoring-frequency can reduce the computation costs of the model monitoring job, but also the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job. This can make the model monitoring job less responsive and effective in detecting and alerting the feature drift1.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 4: Evaluation

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.3 Monitoring ML models in production

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.3: Monitoring ML Models

Using Model Monitoring

Understanding the score threshold slider

 The end-to-end architecture of the predictive model for estimating delay times for multiple transportation routes should be configured using Kubeflow Pipelines. Kubeflow Pipelines is a platform for building and deploying scalable, portable, and reusable machine learning pipelines on Kubernetes. Kubeflow Pipelines allows you to orchestrate your multi-step workflow from data preparation, model training, model evaluation, model deployment, and model serving. Kubeflow Pipelines also provides a user interface for managing and tracking your pipeline runs, experiments, and artifacts1

Using Kubeflow Pipelines has several advantages for this use case:

Full automation: You can define your pipeline as a Python script that specifies the steps and dependencies of your workflow, and use the Kubeflow Pipelines SDK to compile and upload your pipeline to the Kubeflow Pipelines service. You can also use the Kubeflow Pipelines UI to create, run, and monitor your pipeline2

Scalability: You can leverage the power of Kubernetes to scale your pipeline components horizontally and vertically, and use distributed training frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch to train your model on multiple nodes or GPUs3

Portability: You can package your pipeline components as Docker containers that can run on any Kubernetes cluster, and use the Kubeflow Pipelines SDK to export and import your pipeline packages across different environments4

Reusability: You can reuse your pipeline components across different pipelines, and share your components with other users through the Kubeflow Pipelines Component Store. You can also use pre-built components from the Kubeflow Pipelines library or other sources5

Schedulability: You can use the Kubeflow Pipelines UI or the Kubeflow Pipelines SDK to schedule recurring pipeline runs based on cron expressions or intervals. For example, you can schedule your pipeline to run every month to retrain your model on the latest data.

The other options are not as suitable for this use case. Using a model trained and deployed on BigQuery ML is not recommended, as BigQuery ML is mainly designed for simple and quick machine learning tasks on large-scale data, and does not support complex models or custom code. Writing a Cloud Functions script that launches a training and deploying job on AI Platform is not ideal, as Cloud Functions has limitations on the memory, CPU, and execution time, and does not provide a user interface for managing and tracking your pipeline. Using Cloud Composer to programmatically schedule a Dataflow job that executes the workflow from training to deploying your model is not optimal, as Dataflow is mainly designed for data processing and streaming analytics, and does not support model serving or monitoring.

References: 1: Kubeflow Pipelines overview 2: Build a pipeline 3: Scale your machine learning training and prediction workloads 4: Export and import pipelines 5: Build components and pipelines : [Schedule recurring pipeline runs] : [BigQuery ML overview] : [Cloud Functions documentation] : [Dataflow documentation]

Vertex ML Metadata is a service that lets you track and manage the metadata produced by your ML workflows in a centralized way. It helps you have reproducible experiments by generating artifacts that represent the data, parameters, and metrics used or produced by your ML system. You can also analyze the lineage and performance of your ML artifacts using Vertex ML Metadata.

Some of the benefits of using Vertex ML Metadata are:

It captures your ML system’s metadata as a graph, where artifacts and executions are nodes, and events are edges that link them as inputs or outputs.

It allows you to create contexts to group sets of artifacts and executions together, such as experiments, runs, or projects.

It supports querying and filtering the metadata using the Vertex AI SDK for Python or REST commands.

It integrates with other Vertex AI services, such as Vertex AI Pipelines and Vertex AI Experiments, to automatically log metadata and artifacts.

The other options are not suitable for tracking and managing ML metadata in a centralized way.

Option A: Storing your tf.logging data in BigQuery is not enough to capture the full metadata of your ML system, such as the artifacts and their lineage. BigQuery is a data warehouse service that is mainly used for analytics and reporting, not for metadata management.

Option B: Managing all relational entities in the Hive Metastore is not a good solution for ML metadata, as it is designed for storing metadata of Hive tables and partitions, not for ML artifacts and executions. Hive Metastore is a component of the Apache Hive project, which is a data warehouse system for querying and analyzing large datasets stored in Hadoop.

Option C: Storing all ML metadata in Google Cloud’s operations suite is not a feasible option, as it is a set of tools for monitoring, logging, tracing, and debugging your applications and infrastructure, not for ML metadata. Google Cloud’s operations suite does not provide the features and integrations that Vertex ML Metadata offers for ML workflows.

 BigQuery is a service that allows you to store and query large amounts of data in a scalable and cost-effective way. You can use BigQuery to build a model that predicts customer lifetime value over the next three years, by using the create model statement. The create model statement is a SQL command that allows you to create and train an ML model using your data in BigQuery. You can use the create model statement to create an AutoML model, which is a type of model that automatically selects the best features and architecture for your data. By using an AutoML model, you can use the simplest approach to build the model, without writing any code or performing any feature engineering. You can also use the ml.evaluate and ml.predict statements to validate the results of your model. The ml.evaluate statement is a SQL command that allows you to evaluate the performance and quality of your model using various metrics. The ml.predict statement is a SQL command that allows you to make predictions using your model and new data. You can also use the BigQuery console to access visualization tools, such as charts and graphs, to explore and analyze your data and model results. By using the BigQuery console, the create model statement, and the ml.evaluate and ml.predict statements, you can build and validate a model that predicts customer lifetime value over the next three years, and have access to visualization tools. References:

BigQuery documentation

create model statement documentation

ml.evaluate statement documentation

ml.predict statement documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

The option C is the most efficient and scalable solution for deploying a machine learning workflow with multiple models while ensuring version control and minimizing compute resource utilization. By exposing each model as an endpoint in Vertex AI Endpoints, it allows for easy versioning and management of individual models. Using Cloud Run to orchestrate the workflow ensures that the application can scale down to zero, thus minimizing resource utilization when not in use. Cloud Run is a service that allows you to run stateless containers on a fully managed environment or on Google Kubernetes Engine. You can use Cloud Run to invoke the endpoints of each model in the workflow and pass the data between them. You can also use Cloud Run to handle the input and output of the workflow and provide an HTTP interface for the application. References:

Vertex AI Endpoints documentation

Cloud Run documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Sampled Shapley is a fast and scalable approximation of the Shapley value, which is a game-theoretic concept that measures the contribution of each feature to the model prediction. Sampled Shapley is suitable for online prediction requests, as it can return feature attributions with minimal latency. The path count parameter controls the number of samples used to estimate the Shapley value, and a lower value means faster computation. Integrated Gradients is another explanation method that computes the average gradient along the path from a baseline input to the actual input. Integrated Gradients is more accurate than Sampled Shapley, but also more computationally intensive. Therefore, it is not recommended for online prediction requests, especially with a high path count. Prediction drift is the change in the distribution of feature values or labels over time. It can affect the performance and accuracy of the model, and may require retraining or redeploying the model. Vertex AI Model Monitoring allows you to monitor prediction drift on your deployed models and endpoints, and set up alerts and notifications when the drift exceeds a certain threshold. You can specify an email address to receive the notifications, and use the information to retrigger the training pipeline and deploy an updated version of your model. This is the most direct and convenient way to achieve your goal. Training-serving skew is the difference between the data used for training the model and the data used for serving the model. It can also affect the performance and accuracy of the model, and may indicate data quality issues or model staleness. Vertex AI Model Monitoring allows you to monitor training-serving skew on your deployed models and endpoints, and set up alerts and notifications when the skew exceeds a certain threshold. However, this is not relevant to the question, as the question is about the feature attributions of the model, not the data distribution. References:

Vertex AI: Explanation methods

Vertex AI: Configuring explanations

Vertex AI: Monitoring prediction drift

Vertex AI: Monitoring training-serving skew

In this scenario, the goal is to create a custom fraud detection model using AutoML Tables. Fraud detection is a type of binary classification problem, where the model needs to predict whether a transaction is fraudulent or not. The optimization objective is a metric that defines how the model is trained and evaluated. AutoML Tables allows you to choose from different optimization objectives for binary classification problems, such as Log loss, Precision at a Recall value, AUC PR, and AUC ROC.

To choose the best optimization objective for fraud detection, we need to consider the characteristics of the problem and the data. Fraud detection is a problem where the positive class (fraudulent transactions) is very rare compared to the negative class (legitimate transactions). This means that the data is highly imbalanced, and the model needs to be sensitive to the minority class. Moreover, fraud detection is a problem where the cost of false negatives (missing a fraudulent transaction) is much higher than the cost of false positives (flagging a legitimate transaction as fraudulent). This means that the model needs to have high recall (the ability to detect all fraudulent transactions) while maintaining high precision (the ability to avoid false alarms).

Given these considerations, the best optimization objective for fraud detection is the one that maximizes the area under the precision-recall curve (AUC PR) value. The AUC PR value is a metric that measures the trade-off between precision and recall for different probability thresholds. A higher AUC PR value means that the model can achieve high precision and high recall at the same time. The AUC PR value is also more suitable for imbalanced data than the AUC ROC value, which measures the trade-off between the true positive rate and the false positive rate. The AUC ROC value can be misleading for imbalanced data, as it can give a high score even if the model has low recall or low precision.

Therefore, option C is the correct answer. Option A is not suitable, as Log loss is a metric that measures the difference between the predicted probabilities and the actual labels, and does not account for the trade-off between precision and recall. Option B is not suitable, as Precision at a Recall value is a metric that measures the precision at a fixed recall level, and does not account for the trade-off between precision and recall at different thresholds. Option D is not suitable, as AUC ROC is a metric that can be misleading for imbalanced data, as explained above.

References:

AutoML Tables documentation

Optimization objectives for binary classification

Precision-Recall Curves: How to Easily Evaluate Machine Learning Models in No Time

ROC Curves and Area Under the Curve Explained (video)

The best option for deploying a scikit-learn model on Vertex AI with minimal additional code is to wrap the model in a custom prediction routine (CPR) and build a container image from the CPR local model. Upload your scikit-learn model container to Vertex AI Model Registry. Deploy your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and create a Vertex AI batch prediction job. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Google Cloud to deploy and serve a scikit-learn model that supports both online and batch prediction. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. Vertex AI can deploy a trained scikit-learn model to an online prediction endpoint, which can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. Vertex AI can also create a batch prediction job, which can provide high-throughput predictions for a large batch of instances. A custom prediction routine (CPR) is a Python script that defines the logic for preprocessing the input data, running the prediction, and postprocessing the output data. A CPR can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. A CPR can also help you minimize the additional code, as you only need to write a few functions to implement the prediction logic. A container image is a package that contains the model, the CPR, and the dependencies. A container image can help you standardize and simplify the deployment process, as you only need to upload the container image to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy it to Vertex AI Endpoints. By wrapping the model in a CPR and building a container image from the CPR local model, uploading the scikit-learn model container to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job, you can deploy a scikit-learn model on Vertex AI with minimal additional code1.

The other options are not as good as option B, for the following reasons:

Option A: Uploading your model to the Vertex AI Model Registry by using a prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container, deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job that uses the instanceConfig.instanceType setting to transform your input data would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, and could cause errors or poor performance. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container is a container image that is provided by Google Cloud, and contains the scikit-learn framework and the dependencies. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container can help you deploy a scikit-learn model without writing any code, but it also limits your customization options. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container can only handle standard data formats, such as JSON or CSV, and cannot perform any preprocessing or postprocessing on the input or output data. If your input data requires any transformation or normalization before running the prediction, you cannot use a prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting is a parameter that determines the machine type and the accelerator type for the batch prediction job. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting can help you optimize the performance and the cost of the batch prediction job, but it cannot help you transform your input data2.

Option C: Creating a custom container for your scikit-learn model, defining a custom serving function for your model, uploading your model and custom container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. A custom container is a container image that contains the model, the dependencies, and a web server. A custom container can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. A custom serving function is a Python function that defines the logic for running the prediction on the model. A custom serving function can help you implement the prediction logic of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. However, creating a custom container and defining a custom serving function would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. You would need to write code, build and test the container image, configure the web server, and implement the prediction logic. Moreover, creating a custom container and defining a custom serving function would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, as the custom serving function only runs the prediction on the model3.

Option D: Creating a custom container for your scikit-learn model, uploading your model and custom container to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job that uses the instanceConfig.instanceType setting to transform your input data would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, and could cause errors or poor performance. A custom container is a container image that contains the model, the dependencies, and a web server. A custom container can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. However, creating a custom container would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. You would need to write code, build and test the container image, and configure the web server. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting is a parameter that determines the machine type and the accelerator type for the batch prediction job. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting can help you optimize the performance and the cost of the batch prediction job, but it cannot help you transform your input data23.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 2: Serving ML Predictions

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.1 Deploying ML models to production

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.2: Serving ML Predictions

Custom prediction routines

Using pre-built containers for prediction

Using custom containers for prediction

Option A is incorrect because using AI Platform notebooks to perform a Lasso regression analysis on your model, which will eliminate features that do not provide a strong signal, is not a suitable way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. Lasso regression is a method of feature selection that applies a penalty to the coefficients of the linear model, and shrinks them to zero for irrelevant features1. However, this method assumes that the model is linear and additive, which may not be the case for a TensorFlow model. Moreover, this method does not provide feature attributions for each prediction, but rather for the entire dataset.

Option B is incorrect because streaming prediction results to BigQuery, and using BigQuery’s CORR(X1, X2) function to calculate the Pearson correlation coefficient between each feature and the target variable, is not a valid way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. The Pearson correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear relationship between two variables, ranging from -1 to 12. However, this method does not account for the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model. Moreover, this method does not provide feature attributions for each prediction, but rather for the entire dataset.

Option C is correct because using the AI Explanations feature on AI Platform, and submitting each prediction request with the ‘explain’ keyword to retrieve feature attributions using the sampled Shapley method, is the best way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. AI Explanations is a service that allows you to get feature attributions for your deployed models on AI Platform3. Feature attributions are values that indicate how much each feature contributed to the prediction for a given instance4. The sampled Shapley method is a technique that uses the Shapley value, a game-theoretic concept, to measure the contribution of each feature to the prediction5. By using AI Explanations, you can get feature attributions for each prediction request, and identify the most important features for each customer.

Option D is incorrect because using the What-If tool in Google Cloud to determine how your model will perform when individual features are excluded, and ranking the feature importance in order of those that caused the most significant performance drop when removed from the model, is not a practical way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. The What-If tool is a tool that allows you to visualize and analyze your ML models and datasets. However, this method requires manually editing or removing features for each instance, and observing the change in the prediction. This method is not scalable or efficient, and may not capture the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model.

References:

Lasso regression

Pearson correlation coefficient

AI Explanations overview

Feature attributions

Sampled Shapley method

[What-If tool overview]

NVIDIA A100 GPUs are optimized for training complex models like Stable Diffusion XL. Using float32 precision ensures high model accuracy during training, whereas float16 or bfloat16 may cause lower precision in gradients, especially important for image editing. Distributing across multiple instances with T4 GPUs (Options C and D) would not speed up the process effectively due to lower power and more complex setup requirements.

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 This answer is correct because it uses Firebase, a platform that provides a scalable and reliable notification system for mobile and web applications. Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) allows you to send messages and notifications to users across different devices and platforms. By registering each user with a user ID on the FCM server, you can target specific users based on their account balance predictions and send them personalized notifications when their balance is likely to drop below the $25 threshold. This way, you can provide a useful and timely feature for your customers and increase their engagement and retention. References:

[Firebase Cloud Messaging]

[Firebase Cloud Messaging: Send messages to specific devices]

Cloud Data Fusion is a fully managed, cloud-native data integration service that helps users efficiently build and manage ETL/ELT data pipelines. It provides a graphical interface to increase time efficiency and reduce complexity, and allows users to easily create and explore data pipelines using a code-free, point and click visual interface. Cloud Data Fusion also supports a broad range of data sources and formats, including on-premises data marts, and ensures data quality and security by using built-in transformation capabilities and Cloud Data Loss Prevention. Cloud Data Fusion lowers the total cost of ownership by handling performance, scalability, availability, security, and compliance needs automatically. References:

Cloud Data Fusion documentation

Cloud Data Fusion overview

The best option for creating a scalable and maintainable production process that runs end-to-end and tracks the connections between steps, using prototype code to production, feature engineering code in PySpark that runs on Dataproc Serverless, and model training that is executed by using a Vertex AI custom training job, is to use the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components. The first is a Dataproc Serverless component that launches the feature engineering job. The second is a custom component wrapped in the create_custom_training_job_from_component utility that launches the custom model training job. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Kubeflow pipelines to orchestrate and automate your machine learning workflows on Vertex AI. Kubeflow pipelines is a platform that can build, deploy, and manage machine learning pipelines on Kubernetes. Kubeflow pipelines can help you create reusable and scalable pipelines, experiment with different pipeline versions and parameters, and monitor and debug your pipelines. Kubeflow pipelines SDK is a set of Python packages that can help you build and run Kubeflow pipelines. Kubeflow pipelines SDK can help you define pipeline components, specify pipeline parameters and inputs, and create pipeline steps and tasks. A component is a self-contained set of code that performs one step in a pipeline, such as data preprocessing, model training, or model evaluation. A component can be created from a Python function, a container image, or a prebuilt component. A custom component is a component that is not provided by Kubeflow pipelines, but is created by the user to perform a specific task. A custom component can be wrapped in a utility function that can help you create a Vertex AI custom training job from the component. A custom training job is a resource that can run your custom training code on Vertex AI. A custom training job can help you train various types of models, such as linear regression, logistic regression, k-means clustering, matrix factorization, and deep neural networks. By using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first is a Dataproc Serverless component that launches the feature engineering job, and the second is a custom component wrapped in the create_custom_training_job_from_component utility that launches the custom model training job, you can create a scalable and maintainable production process that runs end-to-end and tracks the connections between steps. You can write code that defines the two components, their inputs and outputs, and their dependencies. You can then use the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to create a pipeline that runs the two components in sequence, and submit the pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines for execution. By using Dataproc Serverless component, you can run your PySpark feature engineering code on Dataproc Serverless, which is a service that can run Spark batch workloads without provisioning and managing your own cluster. By using custom component wrapped in the create_custom_training_job_from_component utility, you can run your custom model training code on Vertex AI, which is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, using the notebook to submit the Dataproc Serverless feature engineering job, using the same notebook to submit the custom model training job, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end would require more skills and steps than using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first is a Dataproc Serverless component that launches the feature engineering job, and the second is a custom component wrapped in the create_custom_training_job_from_component utility that launches the custom model training job. Vertex AI Workbench is a service that can provide managed notebooks for machine learning development and experimentation. Vertex AI Workbench can help you create and run JupyterLab notebooks, and access various tools and frameworks, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and JAX. By creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, using the notebook to submit the Dataproc Serverless feature engineering job, using the same notebook to submit the custom model training job, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end, you can create a production process that runs end-to-end and tracks the connections between steps. You can write code that submits the Dataproc Serverless feature engineering job and the custom model training job to Vertex AI, and run the code in the notebook cells. However, creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, using the notebook to submit the Dataproc Serverless feature engineering job, using the same notebook to submit the custom model training job, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end would require more skills and steps than using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first is a Dataproc Serverless component that launches the feature engineering job, and the second is a custom component wrapped in the create_custom_training_job_from_component utility that launches the custom model training job. You would need to write code, create and configure the Vertex AI Workbench notebook, submit the Dataproc Serverless feature engineering job and the custom model training job, and run the notebook cells. Moreover, this option would not use the Kubeflow pipelines SDK, which can simplify the pipeline creation and execution process, and provide various features, such as pipeline parameters, pipeline metrics, and pipeline visualization2.

Option B: Creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, initiating an Apache Spark context in the notebook, and running the PySpark feature engineering code, using the same notebook to run the custom model training job in TensorFlow, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end would not allow you to use Dataproc Serverless to run the feature engineering job, and could increase the complexity and cost of the production process. Apache Spark is a framework that can perform large-scale data processing and machine learning. Apache Spark can help you run various tasks, such as data ingestion, data transformation, data analysis, and data visualization. PySpark is a Python API for Apache Spark. PySpark can help you write and run Spark code in Python. An Apache Spark context is a resource that can initialize and configure the Spark environment. An Apache Spark context can help you create and manage Spark objects, such as SparkSession, SparkConf, and SparkContext. By creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, initiating an Apache Spark context in the notebook, and running the PySpark feature engineering code, using the same notebook to run the custom model training job in TensorFlow, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end, you can create a production process that runs end-to-end and tracks the connections between steps. You can write code that initiates an Apache Spark context and runs the PySpark feature engineering code, and runs the custom model training job in TensorFlow, and run the code in the notebook cells. However, creating a Vertex AI Workbench notebook, initiating an Apache Spark context in the notebook, and running the PySpark feature engineering code, using the same notebook to run the custom model training job in TensorFlow, and running the notebook cells sequentially to tie the steps together end-to-end would not allow you to use Dataproc Serverless to run the feature engineering job, and could increase the complexity and cost of the production process. You would need to write code, create and configure the Vertex AI Workbench notebook, initiate and configure the Apache Spark context, run the PySpark feature engineering code, and run the custom model training job in TensorFlow. Moreover, this option would not use Dataproc Serverless, which is a service that can run Spark batch workloads without provisioning and managing your own cluster, and provide various benefits, such as autoscaling, dynamic resource allocation, and serverless billing2.

Option D: Creating a Vertex AI Pipelines job to link and run both components, using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first component initiates an Apache Spark context that runs the PySpark feature engineering code, and the second component runs the TensorFlow custom model training code, would not allow you to use Dataproc Serverless to run the feature engineering job, and could increase the complexity and cost of the production process. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that can run Kubeflow pipelines on Vertex AI. Vertex AI Pipelines can help you create and manage machine learning pipelines, and integrate with various Vertex AI services, such as Vertex AI Workbench, Vertex AI Training, and Vertex AI Prediction. A Vertex AI Pipelines job is a resource that can execute a pipeline on Vertex AI Pipelines. A Vertex AI Pipelines job can help you run your pipeline steps and tasks, and monitor and debug your pipeline execution. By creating a Vertex AI Pipelines job to link and run both components, using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first component initiates an Apache Spark context that runs the PySpark feature engineering code, and the second component runs the TensorFlow custom model training code, you can create a scalable and maintainable production process that runs end-to-end and tracks the connections between steps. You can write code that defines the two components, their inputs and outputs, and their dependencies. You can then use the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to create a pipeline that runs the two components in sequence, and submit the pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines for execution. However, creating a Vertex AI Pipelines job to link and run both components, using the Kubeflow pipelines SDK to write code that specifies two components, the first component initiates an Apache Spark context that runs the PySpark feature engineering code,

According to the web search results, Reduction Server is a faster GPU all-reduce algorithm developed at Google that uses a dedicated set of reducers to aggregate gradients from workers12. Reducers are lightweight CPU VM instances that are significantly cheaper than GPU VMs2. Therefore, the third worker pool should not have any accelerators, and should use a machine type that has high network bandwidth to optimize the communication between workers and reducers2. TPUs are not supported by Reduction Server, so the first two worker pools should have GPUs and use a container image that contains the training code12. The reduction-server container image is provided by Google and should be used for the third worker pool2.

The F1 score is a metric that combines both precision and recall, and is suitable for evaluating imbalanced classification problems. Precision measures the fraction of true positives among the predicted positives, and recall measures the fraction of true positives among the actual positives. The F1 score is the harmonic mean of precision and recall, and it ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating better performance. The F1 score is a good metric for imbalanced data because it balances both the false positives and the false negatives, and does not favor the majority class over the minority class.

The other options are not good metrics for imbalanced data. RMSE (root mean squared error) is a metric for regression problems, not classification problems. It measures the average squared difference between the predicted and the actual values, and is not suitable for binary outcomes. F score with higher precision weighting than recall, or F0.5 score, is a metric that gives more importance to precision than recall. This means that it penalizes false positives more than false negatives, which is not desirable for imbalanced data where the minority class is more important. F score with higher recall weighting than precision, or F2 score, is a metric that gives more importance to recall than precision. This means that it penalizes false negatives more than false positives, which might be suitable for some imbalanced data problems, but not for the logo detection problem. In this problem, both false positives and false negatives are equally important, as we want to accurately identify the presence or absence of a logo in an image. Therefore, the F1 score is a better metric than the F2 score. References:

Tour of Evaluation Metrics for Imbalanced Classification

Metrics for imbalanced data (simply explained)

 Vertex AI is a service that allows you to create and train ML models using Google Cloud technologies. You can use Vertex AI to import the model that you trained with TensorFlow and store it in the Vertex AI Model Registry. The Vertex AI Model Registry is a service that allows you to store and manage your ML models on Google Cloud. You can then use Vertex AI Pipelines to create a pipeline that uses the DataflowPythonJobOp and the ModelBatchPredictOp components. The DataflowPythonJobOp component is a component that allows you to run a Dataflow job using a Python script. Dataflow is a service that allows you to create and run scalable and portable data processing pipelines on Google Cloud. You can use the DataflowPythonJobOp component to reuse the data processing logic that you created for transforming the data into TFRecords. The ModelBatchPredictOp component is a component that allows you to run a batch prediction job using a model from the Vertex AI Model Registry. Batch prediction is a type of prediction that provides high-throughput responses to large batches of input data. You can use the ModelBatchPredictOp component to make predictions using the TFRecords from the DataflowPythonJobOp component and the model from the Vertex AI Model Registry. You can also configure the ModelBatchPredictOp component to automatically upload the predictions to a BigQuery table. BigQuery is a service that allows you to store and query large amounts of data in a scalable and cost-effective way. You can use BigQuery to store and analyze the predictions from your model. You can also schedule the pipeline to run on a weekly basis, so that the predictions are updated regularly. By using Vertex AI, Vertex AI Pipelines, Dataflow, and BigQuery, you can productionize the model and upload the predictions to a BigQuery table on a weekly schedule. References:

Vertex AI documentation

Vertex AI Pipelines documentation

Dataflow documentation

BigQuery documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

A Dataflow streaming pipeline is a cost-effective way to process large volumes of real-time data from sensors. The RunInference API is a Dataflow transform that allows you to run online predictions on your streaming data using your ML models. By using the RunInference API, you can avoid the latency and cost of using a separate prediction service. The automatic model refresh feature enables you to update your models in the pipeline without redeploying the pipeline. This way, you can ensure that your models are always up-to-date and accurate. By deploying a Dataflow streaming pipeline with the RunInference API and using automatic model refresh, you can achieve sub-millisecond predictions, 24/7 availability, and low operational overhead for your ML models. References:

Dataflow documentation

RunInference API documentation

Automatic model refresh documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

The best option for reducing the sensitivity of the dataset before training the model is to use the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to scan for sensitive data, and use Dataflow with the DLP API to encrypt sensitive values with Format Preserving Encryption. This option allows you to keep every column in the dataset, while protecting the sensitive data from unauthorized access or exposure. The Cloud DLP API can detect and classify various types of sensitive data, such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, and more1. Dataflow can create scalable and reliable pipelines to process large volumes of data from BigQuery and other sources2. Format Preserving Encryption (FPE) is a technique that encrypts sensitive data while preserving its original format and length, which can help maintain the utility and validity of the data3. By using Dataflow with the DLP API, you can apply FPE to the sensitive values in the dataset, and store the encrypted data in BigQuery or another destination. You can also use the same pipeline to decrypt the data when needed, by using the same encryption key and method4.

The other options are not as suitable as option B, for the following reasons:

Option A: Using Dataflow to ingest the columns with sensitive data from BigQuery, and then randomize the values in each sensitive column, would reduce the sensitivity of the data, but also the utility and accuracy of the data. Randomization is a technique that replaces sensitive data with random values, which can prevent re-identification of the data, but also distort the distribution and relationships of the data3. This can affect the performance and quality of the ML model, especially if every column is critical to the model.

Option C: Using the Cloud DLP API to scan for sensitive data, and use Dataflow to replace all sensitive data by using the encryption algorithm AES-256 with a salt, would reduce the sensitivity of the data, but also the utility and validity of the data. AES-256 is a symmetric encryption algorithm that uses a 256-bit key to encrypt and decrypt data. A salt is a random value that is added to the data before encryption, to increase the randomness and security of the encrypted data. However, AES-256 does not preserve the format or length of the original data, which can cause problems when storing or processing the data. For example, if the original data is a 10-digit phone number, AES-256 would produce a much longer and different string, which can break the schema or logic of the dataset3.

Option D: Before training, using BigQuery to select only the columns that do not contain sensitive data, and creating an authorized view of the data so that sensitive values cannot be accessed by unauthorized individuals, would reduce the exposure of the sensitive data, but also the completeness and relevance of the data. An authorized view is a BigQuery view that allows you to share query results with particular users or groups, without giving them access to the underlying tables. However, this option assumes that you can identify the columns that do not contain sensitive data, which may not be easy or accurate. Moreover, this option would remove some columns from the dataset, which can affect the performance and quality of the ML model, especially if every column is critical to the model.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 5: Responsible AI, Week 2: Privacy

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 5: Developing responsible AI solutions, 5.2 Implementing privacy techniques

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 9: Responsible AI, Section 9.4: Privacy

De-identification techniques

Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API

Dataflow

Using Dataflow and Sensitive Data Protection to securely tokenize and import data from a relational database to BigQuery

[AES encryption]

[Salt (cryptography)]

[Authorized views]

 Vertex AI Experiments is a service that allows you to track, compare, and manage experiments with Vertex AI. You can use Vertex AI Experiments to record the parameters, metrics, and artifacts of each model training run, and compare them in a graphical interface. Vertex AI Experiments supports models trained in Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Custom Training, and Vertex AI Workbench notebooks. To use Vertex AI Experiments, you need to create an experiment and submit your pipeline runs or custom training jobs as experiment runs. For models trained on notebooks, you need to use the Vertex AI SDK to log the parameters and metrics to the experiment. This way, you can minimize the effort required to store and compare the model performance across different services. References: Track, compare, manage experiments with Vertex AI Experiments, Vertex AI Pipelines: Metrics visualization and run comparison using the KFP SDK, [Vertex AI SDK for Python]

 The input/output execution performance of a TensorFlow model depends on how efficiently the model can read and process the data from the data source. Reading and processing data from CSV files can be slow and inefficient, especially if the data is large and distributed. Therefore, to improve the input/output execution performance, one should use a more suitable data format and storage system.

One of the best options for improving the input/output execution performance is to convert the CSV files into shards of TFRecords, and store the data in Cloud Storage. TFRecord is a binary data format that can store a sequence of serialized TensorFlow examples. TFRecord has several advantages over CSV, such as:

Faster data loading: TFRecord can be read and processed faster than CSV, as it avoids the overhead of parsing and decoding the text data. TFRecord also supports compression and checksums, which can reduce the data size and ensure data integrity1

Better performance: TFRecord can improve the performance of the model, as it allows the model to access the data in a sequential and streaming manner, and leverage the tf.data API to build efficient data pipelines. TFRecord also supports sharding and interleaving, which can increase the parallelism and throughput of the data processing2

Easier integration: TFRecord can integrate seamlessly with TensorFlow, as it is the native data format for TensorFlow. TFRecord also supports various types of data, such as images, text, audio, and video, and can store the data schema and metadata along with the data3

Cloud Storage is a scalable and reliable object storage service that can store any amount of data. Cloud Storage has several advantages over other storage systems, such as:

High availability: Cloud Storage can provide high availability and durability for the data, as it replicates the data across multiple regions and zones, and supports versioning and lifecycle management. Cloud Storage also offers various storage classes, such as Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive, to meet different performance and cost requirements4

Low latency: Cloud Storage can provide low latency and high bandwidth for the data, as it supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols, and integrates with other Google Cloud services, such as AI Platform, Dataflow, and BigQuery. Cloud Storage also supports resumable uploads and downloads, and parallel composite uploads, which can improve the data transfer speed and reliability5

Easy access: Cloud Storage can provide easy access and management for the data, as it supports various tools and libraries, such as gsutil, Cloud Console, and Cloud Storage Client Libraries. Cloud Storage also supports fine-grained access control and encryption, which can ensure the data security and privacy.

The other options are not as effective or feasible. Loading the data into BigQuery and reading the data from BigQuery is not recommended, as BigQuery is mainly designed for analytical queries on large-scale data, and does not support streaming or real-time data processing. Loading the data into Cloud Bigtable and reading the data from Bigtable is not ideal, as Cloud Bigtable is mainly designed for low-latency and high-throughput key-value operations on sparse and wide tables, and does not support complex data types or schemas. Converting the CSV files into shards of TFRecords and storing the data in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is not optimal, as HDFS is not natively supported by TensorFlow, and requires additional configuration and dependencies, such as Hadoop, Spark, or Beam.

References: 1: TFRecord and tf.Example 2: Better performance with the tf.data API 3: TensorFlow Data Validation 4: Cloud Storage overview 5: Performance : [How-to guides]

The best hardware to choose for your models is a cluster with 2 a2-megagpu-16g machines, each with 16 NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs (640 GB GPU memory in total), 96 vCPUs, and 1.4 TB RAM. This hardware configuration can provide you with enough compute power, memory, and bandwidth to handle your large and complex deep learning models, as well as your custom TensorFlow ops in C++. The NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs are the latest and most advanced GPUs from NVIDIA, which offer high performance, scalability, and efficiency for various ML workloads. They also support multi-instance GPU (MIG) technology, which allows you to partition each GPU into up to seven smaller instances, each with its own memory, cache, and compute cores. This can enable you to run multiple experiments in parallel, or to optimize the resource utilization and cost efficiency of your models. The a2-megagpu-16g machines are part of the Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family, which are designed to provide the best performance and flexibility for GPU-intensive applications. They also offer high-speed NVLink interconnects between the GPUs, which can improve the data transfer and communication between the GPUs. Moreover, the a2-megagpu-16g machines have 96 vCPUs and 1.4 TB RAM, which can support the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

The other options are not optimal for the following reasons:

A. A cluster with 2 n1-highcpu-64 machines, each with 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs (128 GB GPU memory in total), and a n1-highcpu-64 machine with 64 vCPUs and 58 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs are the previous generation of GPUs from NVIDIA, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs. They also do not support the MIG technology, which can limit the flexibility and optimization of your models. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

C. A cluster with an n1-highcpu-64 machine with a v2-8 TPU and 64 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The v2-8 TPU is a cloud tensor processing unit (TPU) device, which is a custom ASIC chip designed by Google to accelerate ML workloads. However, the v2-8 TPU is the second generation of TPUs, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the latest v3-8 TPUs. They also have less memory and bandwidth than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs, which can limit the size and complexity of your models, as well as the data transfer and communication between the devices. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machine has lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

D. A cluster with 4 n1-highcpu-96 machines, each with 96 vCPUs and 86 GB RAM is not a good option, as it does not have any GPUs, which are essential for accelerating deep learning models. The n1-highcpu-96 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

References:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification

NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPU

Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family

Google Cloud N1 VM family

Cloud TPU

The best option for productionizing a Keras model is to use TensorFlow Extended (TFX), a framework for building end-to-end machine learning pipelines that can handle large-scale data and complex workflows. TFX provides standard components for data ingestion, transformation, validation, analysis, training, tuning, serving, and monitoring. TFX pipelines can be orchestrated with Vertex AI Pipelines, a managed service that runs on Google Cloud Platform and leverages Kubernetes and Argo. Vertex AI Pipelines allows you to automate the execution of your TFX pipeline steps, schedule retraining jobs, and scale up or down the resources as needed. By using TFX and Vertex AI Pipelines, you can take advantage of the following benefits:

You can reuse the existing code in your Jupyter notebook, as TFX supports Keras as a first-class citizen. You can also use the Keras Tuner to optimize your model hyperparameters.

You can ensure data quality and consistency by using the TFX Data Validation component, which can detect anomalies, drift, and skew in your data. You can also use the TFX SchemaGen component to generate a schema for your data and enforce it throughout the pipeline.

You can analyze your model performance and fairness by using the TFX Model Analysis component, which can produce various metrics and visualizations. You can also use the TFX Model Validation component to compare your new model with a baseline model and set thresholds for deploying the model to production.

You can deploy your model to various serving platforms by using the TFX Pusher component, which can push your model to Vertex AI, Cloud AI Platform, TensorFlow Serving, or TensorFlow Lite. You can also use the TFX Model Registry to manage the versions and metadata of your models.

You can monitor your model performance and health by using the TFX Model Monitor component, which can detect data drift, concept drift, and prediction skew in your model. You can also use the TFX Evaluator component to compute metrics and validate your model against a baseline or a slice of data.

You can reduce the cost and complexity of managing your own infrastructure by using Vertex AI Pipelines, which provides a serverless environment for running your TFX pipeline. You can also use the Vertex AI Experiments and Vertex AI TensorBoard to track and visualize your pipeline runs.

References:

[TensorFlow Extended (TFX)]

[Vertex AI Pipelines]

[TFX User Guide]

Cloud Vision API offers pre-trained models specialized in identifying explicit or inappropriate content. By sending a copy of each image to a Cloud Storage bucket and triggering Cloud Vision through Cloud Run, the detection of explicit content is automated with minimal development time. Vertex AI custom models require more training data and infrastructure management, while AutoML-based solutions add more complexity. Cloud Vision’s existing capabilities meet the requirement effectively and are highly scalable for real-time moderation needs.

=================

 Recommendations AI is a service that allows users to build, test, and deploy personalized product recommendations for their ecommerce websites. It uses Google’s deep learning models to learn from user behavior and product data, and generate high-quality recommendations that can increase revenue, click-through rate, and customer satisfaction. One of the best practices for using Recommendations AI is to choose the right recommendation type for the business objective. The “Frequently Bought Together” recommendation type shows products that are often purchased together with the current product, and encourages users to add more items to their shopping cart. This can increase the average order value and the revenue for each transaction. The other options are not as effective or feasible for this objective. The “Other Products You May Like” recommendation type shows products that are similar to the current product, and may increase the click-through rate, but not necessarily the shopping cart size. Importing the user events and then the product catalog is not a recommended order, as it may cause data inconsistency and missing recommendations. The product catalog should be imported first, and then the user events. Using placeholder values for the product catalog is not a viable option, as it will not produce meaningful recommendations or reflect the real performance of the model. References:

Recommendations AI documentation

Choosing a recommendation type

Importing data to Recommendations AI

BigQuery is a serverless data warehouse that allows you to perform SQL queries on large-scale data. BigQuery ML is a feature of BigQuery that enables you to create and execute machine learning models using standard SQL queries. You can use BigQuery ML to train a matrix factorization model, which is a common technique for recommender systems. Matrix factorization models learn the latent factors that represent the preferences of users and the characteristics of items, and use them to predict the ratings or interactions between users and items. You can use the CREATE MODEL statement to create a matrix factorization model in BigQuery ML, and specify the matrix_factorization option as the model type. You can also use the ML.RECOMMEND function to generate recommendations for new games based on the trained model. This solution requires the least amount of coding, as you only need to write SQL queries to train and use the model. References: The answer can be verified from official Google Cloud documentation and resources related to BigQuery and BigQuery ML.

BigQuery ML | Google Cloud

Using matrix factorization | BigQuery ML

ML.RECOMMEND function | BigQuery ML

 Parallel interleave is a technique that can improve the performance of the input pipeline by reading and processing data from multiple files in parallel. This can reduce the idle time of the GPU and speed up the training process. Parallel interleave can be implemented using the tf.data.experimental.parallel_interleave () function in TensorFlow, which takes a map function that returns a dataset for each input element, and a cycle length that determines how many input elements are processed concurrently. Parallel interleave can also handle different file sizes and processing times by using a block length argument that controls how many consecutive elements are produced from each input element before switching to another input element. For more information about parallel interleave and how to use it, see the following references:

How to use parallel_interleave in TensorFlow

Better performance with the tf.data API

 A predict request is a way to send data to a trained model and get predictions in return. A predict request can be written in different formats, such as JSON, protobuf, or gRPC, depending on the service and the platform that are used to host and serve the model. A predict request usually contains the following information:

The signature name: This is the name of the signature that defines the inputs and outputs of the model. A signature is a way to specify the expected format, type, and shape of the data that the model can accept and produce. A signature can be specified when exporting or saving the model, or it can be automatically inferred by the service or the platform. A model can have multiple signatures, but only one can be used for each predict request.

The instances: This is the data that is sent to the model for prediction. The instances can be a single instance or a batch of instances, depending on the size and shape of the data. The instances should match the input specification of the signature, such as the number, name, and type of the input tensors.

For the use case of training a text classification model, the correct way to write the predict request is D. data = json.dumps({“signature_name”: “serving_default”, “instances”: [[‘a’, ‘b’], [‘c’, ‘d’], [‘e’, ‘f’]]})

This option involves writing the predict request in JSON format, which is a common and convenient format for sending and receiving data over the web. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation, and it is a way to represent data as a collection of name-value pairs or an ordered list of values. JSON can be easily converted to and from Python objects using the json module.

This option also involves using the signature name “serving_default”, which is the default signature name that is assigned to the model when it is saved or exported without specifying a custom signature name. The serving_default signature defines the input and output tensors of the model based on the SignatureDef that is shown in the image. According to the SignatureDef, the model expects an input tensor called “text” that has a shape of (-1, 2) and a type of DT_STRING, and produces an output tensor called “softmax” that has a shape of (-1, 2) and a type of DT_FLOAT. The -1 in the shape indicates that the dimension can vary depending on the number of instances, and the 2 indicates that the dimension is fixed at 2. The DT_STRING and DT_FLOAT indicate that the data type is string and float, respectively.

This option also involves sending a batch of three instances to the model for prediction. Each instance is a list of two strings, such as [‘a’, ‘b’], [‘c’, ‘d’], or [‘e’, ‘f’]. These instances match the input specification of the signature, as they have a shape of (3, 2) and a type of string. The model will process these instances and produce a batch of three predictions, each with a softmax output that has a shape of (1, 2) and a type of float. The softmax output is a probability distribution over the two possible classes that the model can predict, such as positive or negative sentiment.

Therefore, writing the predict request as data = json.dumps({“signature_name”: “serving_default”, “instances”: [[‘a’, ‘b’], [‘c’, ‘d’], [‘e’, ‘f’]]}) is the correct and valid way to send data to the text classification model and get predictions in return.

References:

[json — JSON encoder and decoder]

Cloud Run can be triggered on new data arrivals, which makes it ideal for near-real-time processing. The function then initiates the Vertex AI Pipeline for preprocessing and storing features in Vertex AI Feature Store, aligning with the retraining needs. Cloud Scheduler (Option A) is suitable for scheduled jobs, not event-driven triggers. Dataflow (Option C) is better suited for batch processing or ETL rather than ML preprocessing pipelines.

=================

 The best option for monitoring the model to determine when retraining is necessary is to schedule a weekly query in BigQuery to compute the success metric. This option has the following advantages:

It allows the model performance to be evaluated regularly, based on the actual outcome of the recommendations. By computing the success metric, which is the percentage of articles that are opened within two days and read for at least one minute, you can measure how well the model is achieving its objective and compare it with the acceptable baseline.

It leverages the scalability and efficiency of BigQuery, which is a serverless, fully managed, and highly scalable data warehouse that can run complex queries over petabytes of data in seconds. By using BigQuery, you can access and analyze all the information needed to compute the success metric, such as the newsletter publication date, the article opening date, and the user reading time, without worrying about the infrastructure or the cost.

It simplifies the model monitoring and retraining workflow, as the weekly query can be scheduled and executed automatically using BigQuery’s built-in scheduling feature. You can also set up alerts or notifications to inform you when the success metric falls below the acceptable baseline, and trigger the model retraining process accordingly.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

Option A: Using Vertex AI Model Monitoring to detect skew of the input features with a sample rate of 100% and a monitoring frequency of two days introduces additional complexity and overhead. This option requires setting up and managing a Vertex AI Model Monitoring service, which is a managed service that provides various tools and features for machine learning, such as training, tuning, serving, and monitoring. However, using Vertex AI Model Monitoring to detect skew of the input features may not reflect the actual performance of the model, as skew is the discrepancy between the distributions of the features in the training dataset and the serving data, which may not affect the outcome of the recommendations. Moreover, using a sample rate of 100% and a monitoring frequency of two days may incur unnecessary cost and latency, as it requires analyzing all the input features every two days, which may not be needed for the model monitoring.

Option B: Scheduling a cron job in Cloud Tasks to retrain the model every week before the newsletter is created introduces additional cost and risk. This option requires creating and running a cron job in Cloud Tasks, which is a fully managed service that allows you to schedule and execute tasks that are invoked by HTTP requests. However, using Cloud Tasks to retrain the model every week may not be optimal, as it may retrain the model more often than necessary, wasting compute resources and cost. Moreover, using Cloud Tasks to retrain the model before the newsletter is created may introduce risk, as it may deploy a new model version that has not been tested or validated, potentially affecting the quality of the recommendations.

Option D: Scheduling a daily Dataflow job in Cloud Composer to compute the success metric introduces additional complexity and cost. This option requires creating and running a Dataflow job in Cloud Composer, which is a fully managed service that runs Apache Airflow pipelines for workflow orchestration. Dataflow is a fully managed service that runs Apache Beam pipelines for data processing and transformation. However, using Dataflow and Cloud Composer to compute the success metric may not be necessary, as it may add more steps and overhead to the model monitoring process. Moreover, using Dataflow and Cloud Composer to compute the success metric daily may not be optimal, as it may compute the success metric more often than needed, consuming more compute resources and cost.

References:

[BigQuery documentation]

[Vertex AI Model Monitoring documentation]

[Cloud Tasks documentation]

[Cloud Composer documentation]

[Dataflow documentation]

 A TPU VM is a virtual machine that has direct access to a Cloud TPU device. TPU VMs provide a simpler and more flexible way to use Cloud TPUs, as they eliminate the need for a separate host VM and network setup. TPU VMs also support interactive debugging tools such as TensorFlow Debugger (tfdbg) and Python Debugger (pdb), which can help researchers develop and troubleshoot complex models. A v3-8 TPU VM has 8 TPU cores, which can provide high performance and scalability for training large models. SSHing into the TPU VM allows the user to run and debug the TensorFlow code directly on the TPU device, without any network overhead or data transfer issues. References:

1: TPU VMs Overview

2: TPU VMs Quickstart

3: Debugging TensorFlow Models on Cloud TPUs

Vertex AI Pipelines and AI Platform Prediction are the platform components that best suit the requirements of the data science team. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to orchestrate and automate your machine learning workflows using pipelines. Pipelines are portable and scalable ML workflows that are based on containers. You can use Vertex AI Pipelines to schedule model retraining, use custom containers, and integrate with other Google Cloud services. AI Platform Prediction is a service that allows you to host your trained models and serve online predictions. You can use AI Platform Prediction to deploy models trained on Vertex AI or elsewhere, and benefit from features such as autoscaling, monitoring, logging, and explainability. References:

Vertex AI Pipelines

AI Platform Prediction

Dynamic range quantization is a model optimization technique for reducing latency that reduces the numerical precision of the weights and activations of models. This technique can reduce the model size, memory usage, and inference time by up to 4x with negligible accuracy loss. Dynamic range quantization can be applied to a trained TensorFlow model without retraining, and it is suitable for mobile applications that require low latency and power consumption.

Weight pruning, model distillation, and dimensionality reduction are also model optimization techniques for reducing latency, but they have some limitations or drawbacks compared to dynamic range quantization:

Weight pruning works by removing parameters within a model that have only a minor impact on its predictions. Pruned models are the same size on disk, and have the same runtime latency, but can be compressed more effectively. This makes pruning a useful technique for reducing model download size, but not for reducing inference time.

Model distillation works by training a smaller and simpler model (student) to mimic the behavior of a larger and complex model (teacher). Distilled models can have lower latency and memory usage than the original models, but they require retraining and may not preserve the accuracy of the teacher model.

Dimensionality reduction works by reducing the number of features or dimensions in the input data or the model layers. Dimensionality reduction can improve the computational efficiency and generalization ability of models, but it may also lose some information or introduce noise in the data or the model. Dimensionality reduction also requires retraining or modifying the model architecture.

References:

[TensorFlow Model Optimization]

[TensorFlow Model Optimization Toolkit — Post-Training Integer Quantization]

[Model optimization methods to cut latency, adapt to new data]

The best option for protecting sensitive customer data that might be used in the ML models is to coarsen the data by putting AGE into quantiles and rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision. This option has the following advantages:

It preserves the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the coarsened data still captures the essential information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, putting AGE into quantiles can group the customers into different age ranges, which can be useful for predicting their preferences or behavior. Rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision can reduce the precision of the location data, but still retain the general geographic region of the customers, which can be useful for personalizing the recommendations or offers.

It reduces the risk of exposing the personal or private information of the customers, as the coarsened data makes it harder to identify or re-identify the individual customers from the data. For example, putting AGE into quantiles can hide the exact age of the customers, which can be considered sensitive or confidential. Rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision can obscure the exact location of the customers, which can be considered sensitive or confidential.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

Option A: Tokenizing all of the fields using hashed dummy values to replace the real values eliminates the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the tokenized data loses all the information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, tokenizing AGE using hashed dummy values can make the data meaningless and irrelevant, as the models cannot learn anything from the random tokens. Tokenizing LATITUDE_LONGITUDE using hashed dummy values can make the data meaningless and irrelevant, as the models cannot learn anything from the random tokens.

Option B: Using principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the four sensitive fields to one PCA vector reduces the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the PCA vector may not capture all the information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, using PCA to reduce AGE, IS_EXISTING_CUSTOMER, LATITUDE_LONGITUDE, and SHIRT_SIZE to one PCA vector can lose some information or introduce noise in the data, as the PCA vector is a linear combination of the original features, which may not reflect their true relationship or importance. Moreover, using PCA to reduce the four sensitive fields to one PCA vector may not reduce the risk of exposing the personal or private information of the customers, as the PCA vector may still be reversible or linkable to the original data, depending on the amount of variance explained by the PCA vector and the availability of the PCA transformation matrix.

Option D: Removing all sensitive data fields, and asking the data science team to build their models using non-sensitive data reduces the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the non-sensitive data may not contain enough information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, removing AGE, IS_EXISTING_CUSTOMER, LATITUDE_LONGITUDE, and SHIRT_SIZE from the data can make the data insufficient and unrepresentative, as the models may not be able to learn the factors that influence the customers’ preferences or behavior. Moreover, removing all sensitive data fields from the data may not be necessary or feasible, as the data protection legislation may allow the use of sensitive data for the ML models, as long as the data is processed in a secure and ethical manner, and the customers’ consent and rights are respected.

References:

Protecting Sensitive Data and AI Models with Confidential Computing | NVIDIA Technical Blog

Training machine learning models from sensitive data | Fast Data Science

Securing ML applications. Model security and protection - Medium

Security of AI/ML systems, ML model security | Cossack Labs

Vulnerabilities, security and privacy for machine learning models

The best option for developing a solution that predicts the presence and severity of the disease with high accuracy is to develop an image segmentation ML model to locate the boundaries of the rust spots. Image segmentation is a technique that partitions an image into multiple regions, each corresponding to a different object or semantic category. Image segmentation can be used to detect and localize the rust spots in the images of crops, and measure their shape and size. This information can then be used to determine the presence and severity of the disease, as the rust spots are correlated to the disease symptoms. Image segmentation can also handle the variability of the rust spots, as it does not rely on predefined templates or thresholds. Image segmentation can be implemented using deep learning models, such as U-Net, Mask R-CNN, or DeepLab, which can learn from large-scale datasets and achieve high accuracy and robustness. The other options are not as suitable for developing a solution that predicts the presence and severity of the disease with high accuracy, because:

Creating an object detection model that can localize the rust spots would only provide the bounding boxes of the rust spots, not their exact boundaries. This would result in less precise measurements of the shape and size of the rust spots, and might affect the accuracy of the disease prediction. Object detection models are also more complex and computationally expensive than image segmentation models, as they have to perform both classification and localization tasks.

Developing a template matching algorithm using traditional computer vision libraries would require manually designing and selecting the templates for the rust spots, which might not capture the diversity and variability of the rust spots. Template matching algorithms are also sensitive to noise, occlusion, rotation, and scale changes, and might fail to detect the rust spots in different scenarios. Template matching algorithms are also less accurate and robust than deep learning models, as they do not learn from data.

Developing an image classification ML model to predict the presence of the disease would only provide a binary or categorical output, not the location or severity of the disease. Image classification models are also less informative and interpretable than image segmentation models, as they do not provide any spatial information or visual explanation for the prediction. Image classification models might also suffer from class imbalance or mislabeling issues, as the presence of the disease might not be consistent or clear across the images. References:

Image Segmentation | Computer Vision | Google Developers

Crop diseases and pests detection based on deep learning: a review | Plant Methods | Full Text

Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection

Computer Vision, IoT and Data Fusion for Crop Disease Detection Using …

On Using Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things for Crop …

Crop Disease Detection Using Machine Learning and Computer Vision

Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying ML models on Google Cloud. It supports both custom and AutoML models, and provides various tools and services for ML development, such as Vertex Pipelines, Vertex Vizier, Vertex Explainable AI, and Vertex Feature Store. Vertex AI can be used to create models for predicting ticket priority and resolution time, as these are domain-specific tasks that require custom training data and evaluation metrics. Cloud Natural Language API is a pre-trained service that provides natural language understanding capabilities, such as sentiment analysis, entity analysis, syntax analysis, and content classification. Cloud Natural Language API can be used to perform sentiment analysis on the support tickets, as this is a general task that does not require domain-specific knowledge or jargon. The other options are not suitable for the given architecture. AutoML Natural Language and AutoML Vision are services that allow users to create custom natural language and vision models using their own data and labels. They are not needed for sentiment analysis, as Cloud Natural Language API already provides this functionality. Cloud Vision API is a pre-trained service that provides image analysis capabilities, such as object detection, face detection, text detection, and image labeling. It is not relevant for the support tickets, as they are not expected to have any images. References:

Vertex AI documentation

Cloud Natural Language API documentation

NLTK is a Python library that provides a set of tools for natural language processing, such as tokenization, stemming, tagging, parsing, and sentiment analysis. Tokenization is a process of breaking a text into smaller units, such as words or sentences. You can use NLTK to quickly experiment with tokenizing text in a managed Vertex AI Workbench notebook. A Vertex AI Workbench notebook is a web-based interactive environment that allows you to write and execute Python code on Google Cloud. You can install the NLTK library from a Jupyter cell by using the !pip install nltk --user command. This command uses the pip package manager to install the NLTK library for the current user. By installing the NLTK library from a Jupyter cell, you can avoid the hassle of opening a terminal or creating a custom image for your notebook. References:

NLTK documentation

Vertex AI Workbench documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Option A is correct because using F-score where recall is weighed more than precision is a suitable metric for binary classification with imbalanced data. F-score is a harmonic mean of precision and recall, which are two metrics that measure the accuracy and completeness of the positive class1. Precision is the fraction of true positives among all predicted positives, while recall is the fraction of true positives among all actual positives1. When the data is imbalanced, the positive class is the minority class, which is usually the class of interest. For example, in this case, the positive class is the images that contain the company’s logo, which are rare but important to detect. By weighing recall more than precision, we can emphasize the importance of finding all the positive examples, even if some false positives are included2.

Option B is incorrect because using RMSE (root mean squared error) is not a valid metric for binary classification with imbalanced data. RMSE is a metric that measures the average magnitude of the errors between the predicted and actual values3. RMSE is suitable for regression problems, where the target variable is continuous, not for classification problems, where the target variable is discrete4.

Option C is incorrect because using F1 score is not the best metric for binary classification with imbalanced data. F1 score is a special case of F-score where precision and recall are equally weighted1. F1 score is suitable for balanced data, where the positive and negative classes are equally important and frequent5. However, for imbalanced data, the positive class is more important and less frequent than the negative class, so F1 score may not reflect the performance of the model well2.

Option D is incorrect because using F-score where precision is weighed more than recall is not a good metric for binary classification with imbalanced data. By weighing precision more than recall, we can emphasize the importance of minimizing the false positives, even if some true positives are missed2. However, for imbalanced data, the true positives are more important and less frequent than the false positives, so this metric may not reflect the performance of the model well2.

References:

Precision, recall, and F-measure

F-score for imbalanced data

RMSE

Regression vs classification

F1 score

[Imbalanced classification]

[Binary classification]

Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and managing machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. It provides various services and tools for different stages of the machine learning lifecycle, such as data preparation, model training, deployment, monitoring, and experimentation. Vertex AI Data Labeling Service is a service that allows you to create and manage human-labeled datasets for machine learning. You can use Vertex AI Data Labeling Service to label the images of semiconductors with binary labels, such as “pass” or “fail”, based on the quality criteria. You can also use Vertex AI AutoML Image Classification, which is a service that allows you to create and train custom image classification models without writing any code. You can use Vertex AI AutoML Image Classification to train an image classification model on the labeled images of semiconductors, and optimize the model for accuracy. You can also use Vertex AI to deploy the model to an endpoint, which is a service that allows you to serve online predictions from your model. You can configure Pub/Sub, which is a service that allows you to publish and subscribe to messages, to publish a message when an image is categorized into the failing class by the model. You can use the message to trigger an action, such as alerting the quality control team or stopping the production line. This solution can help you create a real-time application that automates the quality control process of semiconductors, and maximizes the model accuracy. References: The answer can be verified from official Google Cloud documentation and resources related to Vertex AI, Vertex AI Data Labeling Service, Vertex AI AutoML Image Classification, and Pub/Sub.

Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Vertex AI Data Labeling Service | Google Cloud

Vertex AI AutoML Image Classification | Google Cloud

Pub/Sub | Google Cloud

 A data pipeline is a set of steps or processes that move data from one or more sources to one or more destinations, usually for the purpose of analysis, transformation, or storage. A data pipeline can be designed using various components, such as data sources, data processing tools, data storage systems, and data analytics tools1

To design a data pipeline for analyzing customer sentiments in each call, one should consider the following requirements and constraints:

The call center receives over one million calls daily, and data is stored in Cloud Storage. This implies that the data is large, unstructured, and distributed, and requires a scalable and efficient data processing tool that can handle various types of data formats, such as audio, text, or image.

The data collected must not leave the region in which the call originated, and no Personally Identifiable Information (Pll) can be stored or analyzed. This implies that the data is sensitive and subject to data privacy and compliance regulations, and requires a secure and reliable data storage system that can enforce data encryption, access control, and regional policies.

The data science team has a third-party tool for visualization and access which requires a SQL ANSI-2011 compliant interface. This implies that the data analytics tool is external and independent of the data pipeline, and requires a standard and compatible data interface that can support SQL queries and operations.

One of the best options for selecting components for data processing and for analytics is to use Dataflow for data processing and BigQuery for analytics. Dataflow is a fully managed service for executing Apache Beam pipelines for data processing, such as batch or stream processing, extract-transform-load (ETL), or data integration. BigQuery is a serverless, scalable, and cost-effective data warehouse that allows you to run fast and complex queries on large-scale data23

Using Dataflow and BigQuery has several advantages for this use case:

Dataflow can process large and unstructured data from Cloud Storage in a parallel and distributed manner, and apply various transformations, such as converting audio to text, extracting sentiment scores, or anonymizing PII. Dataflow can also handle both batch and stream processing, which can enable real-time or near-real-time analysis of the call data.

BigQuery can store and analyze the processed data from Dataflow in a secure and reliable way, and enforce data encryption, access control, and regional policies. BigQuery can also support SQL ANSI-2011 compliant interface, which can enable the data science team to use their third-party tool for visualization and access. BigQuery can also integrate with various Google Cloud services and tools, such as AI Platform, Data Studio, or Looker.

Dataflow and BigQuery can work seamlessly together, as they are both part of the Google Cloud ecosystem, and support various data formats, such as CSV, JSON, Avro, or Parquet. Dataflow and BigQuery can also leverage the benefits of Google Cloud infrastructure, such as scalability, performance, and cost-effectiveness.

The other options are not as suitable or feasible. Using Pub/Sub for data processing and Datastore for analytics is not ideal, as Pub/Sub is mainly designed for event-driven and asynchronous messaging, not data processing, and Datastore is mainly designed for low-latency and high-throughput key-value operations, not analytics. Using Cloud Function for data processing and Cloud SQL for analytics is not optimal, as Cloud Function has limitations on the memory, CPU, and execution time, and does not support complex data processing, and Cloud SQL is a relational database service that may not scale well for large-scale data. Using Cloud Composer for data processing and Cloud SQL for analytics is not relevant, as Cloud Composer is mainly designed for orchestrating complex workflows across multiple systems, not data processing, and Cloud SQL is a relational database service that may not scale well for large-scale data.

References: 1: Data pipeline 2: Dataflow overview 3: BigQuery overview : [Dataflow documentation] : [BigQuery documentation]

 Oversampling is a technique for dealing with imbalanced datasets, where the majority class dominates the minority class. It balances the distribution of classes by increasing the number of samples in the minority class. Oversampling can improve the performance of a classifier by reducing the bias towards the majority class and increasing the sensitivity to the minority class.

In this case, the dataset includes transactions, of which 1% are identified as fraudulent. This means that the fraudulent transactions are the minority class and the non-fraudulent transactions are the majority class. A random forest model trained on this dataset might have a low recall for the fraudulent transactions, meaning that it might miss many of them and fail to detect fraud. This could have a high cost for the bank and its customers.

One way to overcome this problem is to oversample the fraudulent transactions 10 times, meaning that each fraudulent transaction is duplicated 10 times in the training dataset. This would increase the proportion of fraudulent transactions from 1% to about 10%, making the dataset more balanced. This would also make the random forest model more aware of the patterns and features that distinguish fraudulent transactions from non-fraudulent ones, and thus improve its accuracy and recall for the minority class.

For more information about oversampling and other techniques for imbalanced data, see the following references:

Random Oversampling and Undersampling for Imbalanced Classification

Exploring Oversampling Techniques for Imbalanced Datasets

The best option for building an ML model to predict customer purchase behavior in BigQuery ML is to use the transform clause with the ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function on the categorical features at model creation and select the categorical and non-categorical features. This option allows you to encode the categorical features as one-hot vectors, which are binary vectors that have only one non-zero element. One-hot encoding is a common technique for handling categorical features in ML models, as it can reduce the dimensionality and sparsity of the data, and avoid the ordinality problem that arises when using numerical labels for categorical values1. The transform clause is a feature of BigQuery ML that lets you apply SQL expressions to transform the input data at model creation time. The transform clause can perform feature engineering, such as one-hot encoding, on the fly, without requiring you to create and store a new table with the transformed data2. By using the transform clause with the ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function, you can create and train an ML model in BigQuery ML with a single SQL statement, and export it to Cloud Storage for online prediction.

The other options are not as good as option A, for the following reasons:

Option B: Using the ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function on the categorical features, and selecting the encoded categorical features and non-categorical features as inputs to create your model, would require more steps and storage than using the transform clause. The ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function is a BigQuery ML function that returns a one-hot encoded vector for a given categorical value. However, using this function alone would not apply the one-hot encoding to the input data at model creation time. You would need to create a new table with the encoded features, and use that table as the input to create your model. This would incur additional storage costs and reduce the performance of the queries.

Option C: Using the create model statement and selecting the categorical and non-categorical features, would not handle the categorical features properly and could result in a poor model performance. The create model statement is a BigQuery ML statement that creates and trains an ML model from a SQL query. However, if the input data contains categorical features, you need to encode them as one-hot vectors or use the category_count option to specify the number of categories for each feature. Otherwise, BigQuery ML would treat the categorical features as numerical values, which can introduce bias and noise into the model3.

Option D: Using the ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function on the categorical features, and selecting the encoded categorical features and non-categorical features as inputs to create your model, is the same as option B, and has the same drawbacks.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 2: Data Engineering for ML on Google Cloud, Week 2: Feature Engineering

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 1: Architecting low-code ML solutions, 1.1 Developing ML models by using BigQuery ML

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 3: Data Engineering for ML, Section 3.2: BigQuery for ML

One-hot encoding

Using the TRANSFORM clause for feature engineering

Creating a model

ML.ONE_HOT_ENCODER function

AI Platform supports hyperparameter tuning for PyTorch models using custom containers. This allows you to use any Python dependencies and libraries that are not included in the pre-built AI Platform Training runtime versions. You can also use a pre-trained model such as ResNet as a base for your custom model. To run a hyperparameter tuning job on AI Platform using custom containers, you need to do the following steps:

Create a Dockerfile that defines the container image for your training application. The Dockerfile should install PyTorch and any other dependencies, copy your training code and configuration files, and set the entrypoint for the container.

Build the container image and push it to Container Registry or another accessible registry.

Create a YAML file that defines the configuration for your hyperparameter tuning job. The YAML file should specify the container image URI, the training input and output paths, the hyperparameters to tune, the metric to optimize, and the tuning algorithm and budget.

Submit the hyperparameter tuning job to AI Platform using the gcloud command-line tool or the AI Platform Training API.

References:

Hyperparameter tuning overview

Using custom containers

PyTorch on AI Platform Training

Option A is not the best answer because it requires modifying the pipeline to use the Vertex AI Feature Store, which may not be feasible or necessary for recovering the data that the model was trained on. The Vertex AI Feature Store is a service that helps you manage, store, and serve feature values for your machine learning models1, but it is not designed for storing the raw data or the TFRecord files.

Option B is the best answer because it leverages the lineage feature of Vertex AI Metadata, which is a service that helps you track and manage the metadata of your machine learning workflows, such as datasets, models, metrics, and parameters2. The lineage feature allows you to view the relationships and dependencies among the artifacts and executions in your pipeline, and trace back the origin and history of any artifact3. By using the lineage feature, you can find the model artifact, determine the version of the model, identify the step that creates the data copy, and search in the metadata for its location.

Option C is not the best answer because it relies on the logging features in the Vertex AI endpoint, which may not be accurate or reliable for finding the data copy. The logging features in the Vertex AI endpoint help you monitor and troubleshoot the online predictions made by your deployed models, but they do not provide information about the training data or the pipeline steps4. Moreover, the timestamp of the model deployment may not match the timestamp of the pipeline run, as there may be delays or errors in the deployment process.

Option D is not the best answer because it requires finding the job ID in Vertex AI Training, which may not be easy or straightforward. Vertex AI Training is a service that helps you train your custom models on Google Cloud, but it does not provide a direct way to link the training job to the model version or the pipeline run. Moreover, searching in the logs of the job may not reveal the location of the data copy, as the logs may only contain information about the training process and the metrics.

References:

1: Introduction to Vertex AI Feature Store | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

2: Introduction to Vertex AI Metadata | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

3: View lineage for ML workflows | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

4: Monitor online predictions | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

[5]: Train custom models | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “design, build, and productionalize ML models to solve business challenges using Google Cloud technologies”. AutoML Vision2 is a service that allows you to train and deploy custom vision models for image classification and object detection. AutoML Vision simplifies the model development process by providing a graphical user interface and a no-code approach. You can use AutoML Vision to train an object detection model by using the annotated image data, and evaluate the model performance using metrics such as mean average precision (mAP) and intersection over union (IoU)3. Therefore, option B is the best way to quickly create an initial model for the given use case. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

AutoML Vision

Object detection evaluation

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

TFRecords are a binary file format that can store large amounts of data efficiently. By converting the images to TFRecords and storing them in a Cloud Storage bucket, you can reduce the data size and improve the data transfer speed. You can then read the TFRecords by using the tf.data.TFRecordDataset function, which creates a dataset of tensors from the TFRecord files. This way, you can read images at scale during training while minimizing data I/O bottlenecks. References:

TFRecord documentation

tf.data.TFRecordDataset documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Z-score normalization is a technique that transforms the values of a numeric variable into standardized units, such that the mean is zero and the standard deviation is one. Z-score normalization can help to compare variables with different scales and ranges, and to reduce the effect of outliers and skewness. The formula for z-score normalization is:

z = (x - mu) / sigma

where x is the original value, mu is the mean of the variable, and sigma is the standard deviation of the variable.

Dataflow is a service that allows you to create and run data processing pipelines on Google Cloud. You can use Dataflow to preprocess raw data prior to model training and prediction, such as applying z-score normalization on data stored in BigQuery. However, using Dataflow for this task may not be the most efficient option, as it involves reading and writing data from and to BigQuery, which can be time-consuming and costly. Moreover, using Dataflow requires manual intervention to update the pipeline whenever new training data is added.

A more efficient way to perform z-score normalization on data stored in BigQuery is to translate the normalization algorithm into SQL and use it with BigQuery. BigQuery is a service that allows you to analyze large-scale and complex data using SQL queries. You can use BigQuery to perform z-score normalization on your data using SQL functions such as AVG(), STDDEV_POP(), and OVER(). For example, the following SQL query can normalize the values of a column called temperature in a table called weather:

SELECT (temperature - AVG(temperature) OVER ()) / STDDEV_POP(temperature) OVER () AS normalized_temperature FROM weather;

By using SQL to perform z-score normalization on BigQuery, you can make the process more efficient by minimizing computation time and manual intervention. You can also leverage the scalability and performance of BigQuery to handle large and complex datasets. Therefore, translating the normalization algorithm into SQL for use with BigQuery is the best option for this use case.

This is not a good result because the model is performing worse than predicting that people will always renew their subscription. This option has the following reasons:

It indicates that the model is not learning from the data, but rather memorizing the majority class. Since 90% of the individuals renew their subscription every year, the model can achieve a 90% accuracy by simply predicting that everyone will renew their subscription, without considering the features or the patterns in the data. However, the model’s accuracy for predicting those who renew their subscription is only 82%, which is lower than the baseline accuracy of 90%. This suggests that the model is overfitting to the minority class (those who cancel their subscription), and underfitting to the majority class (those who renew their subscription).

It implies that the model is not useful for the business problem, as it cannot identify the customers who are at risk of churning. The goal of predicting whether customers will cancel their annual subscription is to prevent customer churn and increase customer retention. However, the model’s accuracy for predicting those who cancel their subscription is 99%, which is too high and unrealistic, as it means that the model can almost perfectly identify the customers who will churn, without any false positives or false negatives. This may indicate that the model is cheating or exploiting some leakage in the data, such as a feature that reveals the outcome of the prediction. Moreover, the model’s accuracy for predicting those who renew their subscription is 82%, which is too low and unreliable, as it means that the model can miss many customers who will churn, and falsely label them as renewing customers. This can lead to losing customers and revenue, and failing to take proactive actions to retain them.

References:

How to Evaluate Machine Learning Models: Classification Metrics | Machine Learning Mastery

Imbalanced Classification: Predicting Subscription Churn | Machine Learning Mastery

Auto scaling is a feature that allows you to automatically adjust the number of prediction nodes based on the traffic and load of your deployed model1. However, auto scaling depends on the CPU utilization of your prediction nodes, which is the percentage of CPU resources used by your model server1. If your CPU utilization is low, even during periods of high load, it means that your model server is not fully utilizing the available CPU resources, and thus auto scaling will not trigger more replicas2.

One possible reason for low CPU utilization is that your model server is using a single worker process to handle prediction requests3. A worker process is a subprocess that runs your model code and handles prediction requests3. If you have only one worker process, it can only handle one request at a time, which can lead to dropped requests when the traffic is high3. To increase the CPU utilization and the throughput of your model server, you can increase the number of worker processes, which will allow your model server to handle multiple requests in parallel3.

To increase the number of workers in your model server, you need to modify your custom model server code and use the --workers flag to specify the number of worker processes you want to use3. For example, if you are using a Gunicorn server, you can use the following command to start your model server with four worker processes:

gunicorn --bind :$PORT --workers 4 --threads 1 --timeout 60 main:app

By increasing the number of workers in your model server, you can increase the CPU utilization of your prediction nodes, and thus enable auto scaling to scale beyond one replica.

The other options are not suitable for your scenario, because they either do not address the root cause of low CPU utilization, such as attaching a GPU or scheduling scaling, or they do not enable auto scaling, such as increasing the minReplicaCount, which is a fixed number of nodes that will always run regardless of the traffic1.

References:

Scaling prediction nodes | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Troubleshooting | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Using a custom prediction routine with online prediction | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

The best option for deploying a new version of a model to a production Vertex AI endpoint that is serving traffic, directing all user traffic to the new model, and deploying the model with minimal disruption to your application, is to create a new model, set the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the new model to the existing endpoint, and set the new model to 100% of the traffic. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to update your model version and serve online predictions with low latency. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. Vertex AI can deploy a trained model to an online prediction endpoint, which can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. A model is a resource that represents a machine learning model that you can use for prediction. A model can have one or more versions, which are different implementations of the same model. A model version can have different parameters, code, or data than another version of the same model. A model version can help you experiment and iterate on your model, and improve the model performance and accuracy. A parentModel parameter is a parameter that specifies the model ID of the model that the new model version is based on. A parentModel parameter can help you inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and avoid duplicating the model configuration. Vertex AI Model Registry is a service that can store and manage your machine learning models on Google Cloud. Vertex AI Model Registry can help you upload and organize your models, and track the model versions and metadata. An endpoint is a resource that provides the service endpoint (URL) you use to request the prediction. An endpoint can have one or more deployed models, which are instances of model versions that are associated with physical resources. A deployed model can help you serve online predictions with low latency, and scale up or down based on the traffic. By creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic, you can deploy a new version of a model to a production Vertex AI endpoint that is serving traffic, direct all user traffic to the new model, and deploy the model with minimal disruption to your application1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the new endpoint, and updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. Cloud DNS is a service that can provide reliable and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) services on Google Cloud. Cloud DNS can help you manage your DNS records, and resolve domain names to IP addresses. By updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint, you can redirect the user traffic to the new endpoint, and avoid breaking the existing application. However, creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the new endpoint, and updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. You would need to write code, create and configure the new endpoint, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to the new endpoint, and update Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint. Moreover, this option would create a new endpoint, which can increase the maintenance and management costs2.

Option B: Creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the new endpoint and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. A parentModel parameter is a parameter that specifies the model ID of the model that the new model version is based on. A parentModel parameter can help you inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and avoid duplicating the model configuration. A default version is a model version that is used for prediction when no other version is specified. A default version can help you simplify the prediction request, and avoid specifying the model version every time. By setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, you can create a new model that is based on the existing model, and use it for prediction without specifying the model version. However, creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the new endpoint and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. You would need to write code, create and configure the new endpoint, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy the model to the new endpoint. Moreover, this option would create a new endpoint, which can increase the maintenance and management costs2.

Option D: Creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the existing endpoint would not allow you to inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and could cause errors or poor performance. A default version is a model version that is used for prediction when no other version is specified. A default version can help you simplify the prediction request, and avoid specifying the model version every time. By setting the new model as the default version, you can use the new model for prediction without specifying the model version. However, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the existing endpoint would not allow you to inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy the model to the existing endpoint. Moreover, this option would not set the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, which could prevent you from inheriting the settings and metadata of the existing model, and cause inconsistencies or conflicts between the model versions2.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 2: Serving ML Predictions

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.1 Deploying ML models to production

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.2: Serving ML Predictions

Vertex AI

Cloud DNS

 Labels are key-value pairs that can be attached to any AI Platform resource, such as jobs, models, versions, or endpoints1. Labels can help you organize your resources into descriptive categories, such as project, team, environment, or purpose. You can use labels to filter the results when you list or monitor your resources, or to group them for billing or quota purposes2. Using labels is a simple and scalable way to manage your AI Platform resources without creating unnecessary complexity or overhead. Therefore, using labels to organize resources is the best strategy for this use case.

References:

Using labels

Filtering and grouping by labels