🤖🧠 MLOps Basics: A Complete Guide to Building, Deploying and Monitoring Machine Learning Models

🗓️ 30 Oct 2025
📚 AI News & Trends

Machine Learning models are powerful but building them is only half the story. The true challenge lies in deploying, scaling and maintaining these models in production environments – a process that requires collaboration between data scientists, developers and operations teams. This is where MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) comes in. MLOps combines the principles of DevOps ...

#MLOps #MachineLearning #DevOps #ModelDeployment #DataScience #ProductionAI

🤖🧠 MiniMax-M2: The Open-Source Revolution Powering Coding and Agentic Intelligence

🗓️ 30 Oct 2025
📚 AI News & Trends

Artificial intelligence is evolving faster than ever, but not every innovation needs to be enormous to make an impact. MiniMax-M2, the latest release from MiniMax-AI, demonstrates that efficiency and power can coexist within a streamlined framework. MiniMax-M2 is an open-source Mixture of Experts (MoE) model designed for coding tasks, multi-agent collaboration and automation workflows. With ...

#MiniMaxM2 #OpenSource #MachineLearning #CodingAI #AgenticIntelligence #MixtureOfExperts

📌 Build LLM Agents Faster with Datapizza AI

🗂 Category: AGENTIC AI

🕒 Date: 2025-10-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 8 min read

Intro Organizations are increasingly investing in AI as these new tools are adopted in everyday…

📌 “Systems thinking helps me put the big picture front and center”

🗂 Category: AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

🕒 Date: 2025-10-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 6 min read

Shuai Guo on deep research agents, analytical AI vs LLM-based agents, and systems thinking

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💡 Pandas Cheatsheet

A quick guide to essential Pandas operations for data manipulation, focusing on creating, selecting, filtering, and grouping data in a DataFrame.

1. Creating a DataFrame
The primary data structure in Pandas is the DataFrame. It's often created from a dictionary.

import pandas as pd

data = {'Name': ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'],
        'Age': [25, 32, 28],
        'City': ['New York', 'Paris', 'New York']}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

print(df)
#       Name  Age       City
# 0    Alice   25   New York
# 1      Bob   32      Paris
# 2  Charlie   28   New York

• A dictionary is defined where keys become column names and values become the data in those columns. pd.DataFrame() converts it into a tabular structure.

2. Selecting Data with .loc and .iloc
Use .loc for label-based selection and .iloc for integer-position based selection.

# Select the first row by its integer position (0)
print(df.iloc[0])

# Select the row with index label 1 and only the 'Name' column
print(df.loc[1, 'Name'])

# Output for df.iloc[0]:
# Name       Alice
# Age           25
# City    New York
# Name: 0, dtype: object
#
# Output for df.loc[1, 'Name']:
# Bob

• .iloc[0] gets all data from the row at index position 0.
• .loc[1, 'Name'] gets the data at the intersection of index label 1 and column label 'Name'.

3. Filtering Data
Select subsets of data based on conditions.

# Select rows where Age is greater than 27
filtered_df = df[df['Age'] > 27]
print(filtered_df)
#       Name  Age       City
# 1      Bob   32      Paris
# 2  Charlie   28   New York

• The expression df['Age'] > 27 creates a boolean Series (True/False).
• Using this Series as an index df[...] returns only the rows where the value was True.

4. Grouping and Aggregating
The "group by" operation involves splitting data into groups, applying a function, and combining the results.

# Group by 'City' and calculate the mean age for each city
city_ages = df.groupby('City')['Age'].mean()
print(city_ages)
# City
# New York    26.5
# Paris       32.0
# Name: Age, dtype: float64

• .groupby('City') splits the DataFrame into groups based on unique city values.
• ['Age'].mean() then calculates the mean of the 'Age' column for each of these groups.

#Python #Pandas #DataAnalysis #DataScience #Programming

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By: @DataScienceM ✨

💡 SciPy: Scientific Computing in Python

SciPy is a fundamental library for scientific and technical computing in Python. Built on NumPy, it provides a wide range of user-friendly and efficient numerical routines for tasks like optimization, integration, linear algebra, and statistics.

import numpy as np
from scipy.optimize import minimize

# Define a function to minimize: f(x) = (x - 3)^2
def f(x):
    return (x - 3)**2

# Find the minimum of the function with an initial guess
res = minimize(f, x0=0)

print(f"Minimum found at x = {res.x[0]:.4f}")
# Output:
# Minimum found at x = 3.0000

• Optimization: scipy.optimize.minimize is used to find the minimum value of a function.
• We provide the function (f) and an initial guess (x0=0).
• The result object (res) contains the solution in the .x attribute.

from scipy.integrate import quad

# Define the function to integrate: f(x) = sin(x)
def integrand(x):
    return np.sin(x)

# Integrate sin(x) from 0 to pi
result, error = quad(integrand, 0, np.pi)

print(f"Integral result: {result:.4f}")
print(f"Estimated error: {error:.2e}")
# Output:
# Integral result: 2.0000
# Estimated error: 2.22e-14

• Numerical Integration: scipy.integrate.quad calculates the definite integral of a function over a given interval.
• It returns a tuple containing the integral result and an estimate of the absolute error.

from scipy.linalg import solve

# Solve the linear system Ax = b
# 3x + 2y = 12
#  x -  y = 1

A = np.array([[3, 2], [1, -1]])
b = np.array([12, 1])

solution = solve(A, b)
print(f"Solution (x, y): {solution}")
# Output:
# Solution (x, y): [2.8 1.8]

• Linear Algebra: scipy.linalg provides more advanced linear algebra routines than NumPy.
• solve(A, b) efficiently finds the solution vector x for a system of linear equations defined by a matrix A and a vector b.

from scipy import stats

# Create two independent samples
sample1 = np.random.normal(loc=5, scale=2, size=100)
sample2 = np.random.normal(loc=5.5, scale=2, size=100)

# Perform an independent t-test
t_stat, p_value = stats.ttest_ind(sample1, sample2)

print(f"T-statistic: {t_stat:.4f}")
print(f"P-value: {p_value:.4f}")
# Output (will vary):
# T-statistic: -1.7432
# P-value: 0.0829

• Statistics: scipy.stats is a powerful module for statistical analysis.
• ttest_ind calculates the T-test for the means of two independent samples.
• The p-value helps determine if the difference between sample means is statistically significant (a low p-value, e.g., < 0.05, suggests it is).

#SciPy #Python #DataScience #ScientificComputing #Statistics

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By: @DataScienceM ✨

📌 4 Techniques to Optimize Your LLM Prompts for Cost, Latency and Performance

🗂 Category: LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS

🕒 Date: 2025-10-29 | ⏱️ Read time: 8 min read

Learn how to greatly improve the performance of your LLM application

📌 Bringing Vision-Language Intelligence to RAG with ColPali

🗂 Category: LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS

🕒 Date: 2025-10-29 | ⏱️ Read time: 8 min read

Unlocking the value of non-textual contents in your knowledge base

📌 Orchestrating a Dynamic Time-series Pipeline in Azure

🗂 Category: DATA ENGINEERING

🕒 Date: 2024-05-31 | ⏱️ Read time: 9 min read

Explore how to build, trigger, and parameterize a time-series data pipeline with ADF and Databricks,…

📌 N-HiTS – Making Deep Learning for Time Series Forecasting More Efficient

🗂 Category: DATA SCIENCE

🕒 Date: 2024-05-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 11 min read

A deep dive into how N-HiTS works and how you can use it

📌 Scalable OCR Pipelines using AWS

🗂 Category: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

🕒 Date: 2024-05-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 13 min read

A survey of 3 different OCR pipeline patterns and their pros and cons

📌 Build Your Own ChatGPT-like Chatbot with Java and Python

🗂 Category: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

🕒 Date: 2024-05-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 33 min read

Creating a custom LLM inference infrastructure from scratch

📌 Introduction to spatial analysis of cells for neuroscientists (part 1)

🗂 Category: DATA SCIENCE

🕒 Date: 2024-05-30 | ⏱️ Read time: 10 min read

An approach using point patterns analysis (PPA) with spatstat

📌 Let Hypothesis Break Your Python Code Before Your Users Do

🗂 Category: PROGRAMMING

🕒 Date: 2025-10-31 | ⏱️ Read time: 19 min read

Property-based tests that find bugs you didn’t know existed.

Clean Code Tip:

Instead of creating messy intermediate DataFrames for each step of a transformation, use method chaining. For custom or complex operations that don't have a built-in method, use .pipe() to insert your own functions without breaking the chain. This creates a clean, readable, and reproducible data processing pipeline. ⛓️

Example:

import pandas as pd

# Sample data
data = {
    'region': ['North', 'South', 'North', 'South', 'East', 'West'],
    'product': ['A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'A', 'B'],
    'sales': [100, 150, 200, 50, 300, 220],
    'cost': [80, 120, 150, 40, 210, 180]
}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# A custom function to apply a regional surcharge
def apply_surcharge(dataframe, region, surcharge_percent):
    df_copy = dataframe.copy()
    surcharge_rate = 1 + (surcharge_percent / 100)
    mask = df_copy['region'] == region
    df_copy.loc[mask, 'profit'] *= surcharge_rate
    return df_copy

# --- The Old, Step-by-Step Way ---
print("--- Old Way ---")
# Step 1: Filter out East and West regions
df1 = df[df['region'].isin(['North', 'South'])]
# Step 2: Calculate profit
df2 = df1.assign(profit=df1['sales'] - df1['cost'])
# Step 3: Apply the custom surcharge logic, breaking the flow
df3 = apply_surcharge(df2, region='North', surcharge_percent=5)
# Step 4: Aggregate the results
old_result = df3.groupby('region')['profit'].sum().round(2)
print(old_result)


# --- The Clean, Chained Way using .pipe() ---
print("\n--- Clean Way ---")
clean_result = (
    df
    .query("region in ['North', 'South']")
    .assign(profit=lambda d: d['sales'] - d['cost'])
    .pipe(apply_surcharge, region='North', surcharge_percent=5)
    .groupby('region')['profit']
    .sum()
    .round(2)
)
print(clean_result)

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By: @DataScienceM ✨

Clean Code Tip:

For sequential CNN architectures, defining layers individually and calling them one-by-one in the forward method creates boilerplate. Encapsulate your network trunk in an nn.Sequential container. This makes your architecture declarative, compact, and much easier to read at a glance. 🏗️

Example:

import torch
import torch.nn as nn

# --- The Verbose, Repetitive Way ---
class VerboseCNN(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, num_classes=10):
        super().__init__()
        # Layers are defined one by one
        self.conv1 = nn.Conv2d(1, 16, kernel_size=3, padding=1)
        self.relu1 = nn.ReLU()
        self.pool1 = nn.MaxPool2d(2)
        self.conv2 = nn.Conv2d(16, 32, kernel_size=3, padding=1)
        self.relu2 = nn.ReLU()
        self.pool2 = nn.MaxPool2d(2)
        self.flatten = nn.Flatten()
        self.fc = nn.Linear(32 * 7 * 7, num_classes)

    def forward(self, x):
        # The forward pass is a long, manual chain of calls
        x = self.conv1(x)
        x = self.relu1(x)
        x = self.pool1(x)
        x = self.conv2(x)
        x = self.relu2(x)
        x = self.pool2(x)
        x = self.flatten(x)
        x = self.fc(x)
        return x

print("--- Verbose Way ---")
verbose_model = VerboseCNN()
print(verbose_model)


# --- The Clean, Declarative Way with nn.Sequential ---
class CleanCNN(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, num_classes=10):
        super().__init__()
        # The feature extractor is a clean, sequential block
        self.features = nn.Sequential(
            nn.Conv2d(1, 16, kernel_size=3, padding=1),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.MaxPool2d(2),
            nn.Conv2d(16, 32, kernel_size=3, padding=1),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.MaxPool2d(2),
            nn.Flatten()
        )
        self.classifier = nn.Linear(32 * 7 * 7, num_classes)

    def forward(self, x):
        # The forward pass is simple and clear
        features = self.features(x)
        output = self.classifier(features)
        return output

print("\n--- Clean Way ---")
clean_model = CleanCNN()
print(clean_model)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
By: @DataScienceM ✨

📌 The Machine Learning Projects Employers Want to See

🗂 Category: MACHINE LEARNING

🕒 Date: 2025-10-31 | ⏱️ Read time: 7 min read

What machine learning projects will actually get you interviews and jobs

Clean Code Tip:

When building complex architectures like ResNets, defining skip connections directly in the main forward method leads to repetitive, hard-to-read code. Encapsulate repeating patterns, like a residual block, into their own reusable nn.Module. This promotes modularity, follows the DRY principle, and makes your overall network architecture dramatically cleaner. 🧱

Example:

import torch
import torch.nn as nn

# --- The Cluttered, Repetitive Way ---
class ClutteredResNet(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, in_channels=64, num_classes=10):
        super().__init__()
        # Defining layers for two blocks inline... gets messy fast.
        self.conv1a = nn.Conv2d(in_channels, 64, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn1a = nn.BatchNorm2d(64)
        self.conv1b = nn.Conv2d(64, 64, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn1b = nn.BatchNorm2d(64)
        
        self.conv2a = nn.Conv2d(64, 64, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn2a = nn.BatchNorm2d(64)
        self.conv2b = nn.Conv2d(64, 64, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn2b = nn.BatchNorm2d(64)
        
        self.relu = nn.ReLU(inplace=True)
        # ...imagine more blocks...

    def forward(self, x):
        # Manually implementing the first block's logic
        identity1 = x
        out = self.relu(self.bn1a(self.conv1a(x)))
        out = self.bn1b(self.conv1b(out))
        out += identity1 # The skip connection
        out = self.relu(out)
        
        # Repeating the same logic for the second block
        identity2 = out
        out = self.relu(self.bn2a(self.conv2a(out)))
        out = self.bn2b(self.conv2b(out))
        out += identity2 # Another skip connection
        out = self.relu(out)
        return out


# --- The Clean, Modular Way ---

# 1. First, create a reusable module for the repeating block
class ResidualBlock(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, in_channels, out_channels):
        super().__init__()
        self.conv1 = nn.Conv2d(in_channels, out_channels, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn1 = nn.BatchNorm2d(out_channels)
        self.conv2 = nn.Conv2d(out_channels, out_channels, 3, padding=1)
        self.bn2 = nn.BatchNorm2d(out_channels)
        self.relu = nn.ReLU(inplace=True)

    def forward(self, x):
        identity = x
        out = self.relu(self.bn1(self.conv1(x)))
        out = self.bn2(self.conv2(out))
        out += identity # Encapsulated skip connection logic
        out = self.relu(out)
        return out

# 2. Then, compose the main model from these clean blocks
class CleanResNet(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, in_channels=64, num_classes=10):
        super().__init__()
        # The architecture is now clear and declarative
        self.layer1 = ResidualBlock(in_channels, 64)
        self.layer2 = ResidualBlock(64, 64)
        # ... add more blocks easily ...

    def forward(self, x):
        # The forward pass is simple and readable
        x = self.layer1(x)
        x = self.layer2(x)
        return x

print("--- Clean Model Architecture ---")
model = CleanResNet()
print(model)

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By: @DataScienceM ✨

#CNN #DeepLearning #Python #Tutorial

Lesson: Building a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for Image Classification

This lesson will guide you through building a CNN from scratch using TensorFlow and Keras to classify images from the CIFAR-10 dataset.

---

Part 1: Setup and Data Loading

First, we import the necessary libraries and load the CIFAR-10 dataset. This dataset contains 60,000 32x32 color images in 10 classes.

import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras import datasets, layers, models
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

# Load the CIFAR-10 dataset
(x_train, y_train), (x_test, y_test) = datasets.cifar10.load_data()

# Check the shape of the data
print("Training data shape:", x_train.shape)
print("Test data shape:", x_test.shape)

#TensorFlow #Keras #DataLoading

---

Part 2: Data Exploration and Preprocessing

We need to prepare the data before feeding it to the network. This involves:
• Normalization: Scaling pixel values from the 0-255 range to the 0-1 range.
• One-Hot Encoding: Converting class vectors (integers) to a binary matrix.

Let's also visualize some images to understand our data.

# Define class names for CIFAR-10
class_names = ['airplane', 'automobile', 'bird', 'cat', 'deer', 'dog', 'frog', 'horse', 'ship', 'truck']

# Visualize a few images
plt.figure(figsize=(10,10))
for i in range(25):
    plt.subplot(5,5,i+1)
    plt.xticks([])
    plt.yticks([])
    plt.grid(False)
    plt.imshow(x_train[i])
    plt.xlabel(class_names[y_train[i][0]])
plt.show()

# Normalize pixel values to be between 0 and 1
x_train = x_train.astype('float32') / 255.0
x_test = x_test.astype('float32') / 255.0

# One-hot encode the labels
y_train = tf.keras.utils.to_categorical(y_train, num_classes=10)
y_test = tf.keras.utils.to_categorical(y_test, num_classes=10)

#DataPreprocessing #Normalization #Visualization

---

Part 3: Building the CNN Model

Now, we'll construct our CNN model. A common architecture consists of a stack of Conv2D and MaxPooling2D layers, followed by Dense layers for classification.

• Conv2D: Extracts features (like edges, corners) from the input image.
• MaxPooling2D: Reduces the spatial dimensions (downsampling), which helps in making the feature detection more robust.
• Flatten: Converts the 2D feature maps into a 1D vector.
• Dense: A standard fully-connected neural network layer.

model = models.Sequential()

# Convolutional Base
model.add(layers.Conv2D(32, (3, 3), activation='relu', input_shape=(32, 32, 3)))
model.add(layers.MaxPooling2D((2, 2)))
model.add(layers.Conv2D(64, (3, 3), activation='relu'))
model.add(layers.MaxPooling2D((2, 2)))
model.add(layers.Conv2D(64, (3, 3), activation='relu'))

# Flatten and Dense Layers
model.add(layers.Flatten())
model.add(layers.Dense(64, activation='relu'))
model.add(layers.Dense(10, activation='softmax')) # 10 output classes

# Print the model summary
model.summary()

#ModelBuilding #CNN #KerasLayers

---

Part 4: Compiling the Model

Before training, we need to configure the learning process. This is done via the compile() method, which requires:
• Optimizer: An algorithm to update the model's weights (e.g., 'adam').
• Loss Function: A function to measure how inaccurate the model is during training (e.g., 'categorical_crossentropy' for multi-class classification).
• Metrics: Used to monitor the training and testing steps (e.g., 'accuracy').

model.compile(optimizer='adam',
              loss='categorical_crossentropy',
              metrics=['accuracy'])

#ModelCompilation #Optimizer #LossFunction

---

Part 5: Training the Model

We train the model using the fit() method, providing our training data, batch size, number of epochs, and validation data to monitor performance on unseen data.

history = model.fit(x_train, y_train, 
                    epochs=15, 
                    batch_size=64,
                    validation_data=(x_test, y_test))

#Training #MachineLearning #ModelFit

---

Part 6: Evaluating and Discussing Results

After training, we evaluate the model's performance on the test set. We also plot the training history to visualize accuracy and loss curves. This helps us understand if the model is overfitting or underfitting.

# Evaluate the model on the test data
test_loss, test_acc = model.evaluate(x_test, y_test, verbose=2)
print(f'\nTest accuracy: {test_acc:.4f}')

# Plot training & validation accuracy values
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 4))
plt.subplot(1, 2, 1)
plt.plot(history.history['accuracy'])
plt.plot(history.history['val_accuracy'])
plt.noscript('Model accuracy')
plt.ylabel('Accuracy')
plt.xlabel('Epoch')
plt.legend(['Train', 'Test'], loc='upper left')

# Plot training & validation loss values
plt.subplot(1, 2, 2)
plt.plot(history.history['loss'])
plt.plot(history.history['val_loss'])
plt.noscript('Model loss')
plt.ylabel('Loss')
plt.xlabel('Epoch')
plt.legend(['Train', 'Test'], loc='upper left')

plt.show()

Discussion:
The plots show how accuracy and loss change over epochs. Ideally, both training and validation accuracy should increase, while losses decrease. If the validation accuracy plateaus or decreases while training accuracy continues to rise, it's a sign of overfitting. Our simple model achieves a decent accuracy. To improve it, one could use techniques like Data Augmentation, Dropout layers, or a deeper architecture.

#Evaluation #Results #Accuracy #Overfitting

---

Part 7: Making Predictions on a Single Image

This is how you handle a single image file for prediction. The model expects a batch of images as input, so we must add an extra dimension to our single image before passing it to model.predict().

# Select a single image from the test set
img_index = 15
test_image = x_test[img_index]
true_label_index = np.argmax(y_test[img_index])

# Display the image
plt.imshow(test_image)
plt.noscript(f"Actual Label: {class_names[true_label_index]}")
plt.show()

# The model expects a batch of images, so we add a dimension
image_for_prediction = np.expand_dims(test_image, axis=0)
print("Image shape before prediction:", test_image.shape)
print("Image shape after adding batch dimension:", image_for_prediction.shape)

# Make a prediction
predictions = model.predict(image_for_prediction)
predicted_label_index = np.argmax(predictions[0])

# Print the result
print(f"\nPrediction Probabilities: {predictions[0]}")
print(f"Predicted Label: {class_names[predicted_label_index]}")
print(f"Actual Label: {class_names[true_label_index]}")

#Prediction #ImageProcessing #Inference

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By: @DataScienceM ✨