How hard is the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam?

The AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam is a certification exam offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that validates an individual’s expertise in designing, implementing, deploying, and maintaining machine learning (ML) solutions on the AWS platform.

The exam is intended for individuals who have a solid understanding of ML concepts, can use AWS services for ML workflows, and are proficient in building, training, and deploying ML models on AWS.

To prepare for the exam, candidates need to have experience with AWS services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Personalize, and Amazon Forecast. They should also be familiar with data science and ML concepts such as data wrangling, feature engineering, model selection, and evaluation metrics.

AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam Glossary

Here is a glossary of some common terms and concepts related to the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): The simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.
• Machine Learning (ML): A subset of AI that enables machines to learn from data and improve over time without being explicitly programmed.
• Deep Learning (DL): A subset of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks with multiple layers to analyze and learn from data.
• Neural Network: A set of algorithms that are modeled after the structure of the human brain to recognize patterns in data.
• Data Science: The study of data and how it can be used to solve complex problems and make decisions.
• Feature Engineering: The process of selecting and extracting relevant features from data to improve the performance of machine learning models.
• Supervised Learning: A type of machine learning where the algorithm learns from labeled data, where the target variable is known.
• Reinforcement Learning: A type of machine learning where the algorithm learns by receiving feedback from the environment and adjusting its actions accordingly.
• Model Selection: The process of selecting the best machine learning algorithm and hyperparameters for a given problem.
• Evaluation Metrics: The metrics used to evaluate the performance of machine learning models, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score.
• Amazon SageMaker: A fully managed service that enables developers and data scientists to build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale.
• Amazon Comprehend: A service that uses natural language processing (NLP) to extract insights and relationships from text.
• Learn Amazon Forecast: A service that provides time-series forecasting using machine learning algorithms.
• Amazon Augmented AI: A service that enables human review and feedback on machine learning predictions to improve accuracy and reduce bias.

AWS Machine Learning Specialty Study Guide

Here are some official AWS resources that can help you prepare for the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam:

• AWS Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty: This free, digital course is designed to help you prepare for the exam by covering key concepts and exam content. The course includes video lessons, demonstrations, and quizzes.
• AWS Machine Learning Blog: The AWS Machine Learning Blog is a great resource for learning about the latest updates and best practices in machine learning on AWS. The blog features articles, tutorials, case studies, and announcements related to AWS machine learning services.
• AWS Documentation: The AWS Documentation provides detailed documentation on AWS machines learning services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Personalize, and Amazon Forecast. The documentation includes technical guides, API references, and examples.
• AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty Exam Guide: This official exam guide provides information about the exam format, content areas, and sample questions. It also includes study tips and recommended resources for exam preparation.
• AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty Exam Readiness Workshop: This one-day, instructor-led workshop is designed to help you prepare for the exam by covering key concepts and exam content. The workshop includes interactive discussions, demos, and hands-on labs.

AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks that can help you prepare for and pass the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam:

• Understand the Exam Content: The exam covers a range of topics related to machine learning on AWS, including data engineering, data analysis, ML models, and deployment. It’s important to review the exam guide and ensure you understand each of the content areas.
• Review AWS Machine Learning Services: The exam includes questions related to AWS machine learning services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Personalize, and Amazon Forecast. Review the documentation and understand the capabilities and use cases of each service.
• Practice with Sample Questions: Use the official sample exam questions and practice exams to get a sense of the exam format and difficulty level. Practice questions can also help you identify areas where you need more study.
• Hands-On Experience: It’s important to have hands-on experience with AWS machine learning services to prepare for the exam. Practice building, training, and deploying ML models using the services.
• Take AWS Training: AWS offers a range of training options for machine learning on AWS. Consider taking the official exam readiness course or attending an instructor-led workshop to get a deeper understanding of the exam content.
• Time Management: The exam includes 65 questions and you have 180 minutes to complete it. Manage your time carefully and ensure you have enough time to review your answers before submitting the exam.

Exam Course Outline

There are 4 domains to focus on in this AWS Machine Learning Specialty Certificate,

Domain 1: Data Engineering

1.1 Create data repositories for machine learning.

• Identify data sources (e.g., content and location, primary sources such as user data) (AWS Documentation: Supported data sources)
• Determine storage mediums (e.g., DB, Data Lake, S3, EFS, EBS) (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon S3 with Amazon ML, Creating a Datasource with Amazon Redshift Data, Using Data from an Amazon RDS Database, Host instance storage volumes, Amazon Machine Learning and Amazon Elastic File System)

1.2 Identify and implement a data ingestion solution.

• Data job styles/types (batch load, streaming)
• Data ingestion pipelines (Batch-based ML workloads and streaming-based ML workloads)
  • Kinesis (AWS Documentation: Amazon Kinesis Data Streams)
  • Learning Kinesis Analytics (AWS Documentation: Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics)
  • Kinesis Firehose (AWS Documentation: Build seamless data streaming pipelines)
  • EMR (AWS Documentation: Process Data Using Amazon EMR with Hadoop Streaming, Optimize downstream data processing)
  • Glue (AWS Documentation: Simplify data pipelines, AWS Glue)
• Job scheduling (AWS Documentation: Job scheduling, Time-based schedules for jobs and crawlers)

1.3 Identify and implement a data transformation solution.

• Transforming data transit (ETL: Glue, EMR, AWS Batch) (AWS Documentation: extract, transform, and load data for analytic processing using AWS Glue)
• Handle ML-specific data using map reduce (Hadoop, Spark, Hive) (AWS Documentation: Large-Scale Machine Learning with Spark on Amazon EMR, Apache Hive on Amazon EMR, Apache Spark on Amazon EMR, Use Apache Spark with Amazon SageMaker, Perform interactive data engineering and data science workflows)

Domain 2: Exploratory Data Analysis

2.1 Sanitize and prepare data for modeling.

• Identify and handle missing data, corrupt data, stop words, etc. (AWS Documentation: Managing missing values in your target and related datasets, Amazon SageMaker DeepAR now supports missing values, Configuring Text Analysis Schemes)
• Formatting, normalizing, augmenting, and scaling data (AWS Documentation: Understanding the Data Format for Amazon ML, Common Data Formats for Training, Data Transformations Reference, AWS Glue DataBrew, Easily train models using datasets, Visualizing Amazon SageMaker machine learning predictions)
• Labeled data (recognizing when you have enough labeled data and identifying mitigation strategies [Data labeling tools (Mechanical Turk, manual labor)]) (AWS Documentation: data labeling for machine learning, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Use Amazon Mechanical Turk with Amazon SageMaker)

2.2 Perform feature engineering.

• Identify and extract features from data sets, including from data sources such as text, speech, image, public datasets, etc. (AWS Documentation: Feature Processing, Feature engineering, Amazon Textract, Amazon Textract features)
• Analyze/evaluate feature engineering concepts (binning, tokenization, outliers, synthetic features, 1 hot encoding, reducing dimensionality of data) (AWS Documentation: Data Transformations Reference, Building a serverless tokenization solution to mask sensitive data, ML-powered anomaly detection for outliers, ONE_HOT_ENCODING, Running Principal Component Analysis, Perform a large-scale principal component analysis)

2.3 Analyze and visualize data for machine learning.

• Graphing (scatter plot, time series, histogram, box plot) (AWS Documentation: Using scatter plots, Run a query that produces a time series visualization, Using histograms, Using box plots)
• Interpreting descriptive statistics (correlation, summary statistics, p value)
• Clustering (hierarchical, diagnosing, elbow plot, cluster size)

Domain 3: Modeling

3.1 Frame business problems as machine learning problems.

• Determine when to use/when not to use ML (AWS Documentation: When to Use Machine Learning)
• Know the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning
• Selecting from among classification, regression, forecasting, clustering, recommendation, etc. (AWS Documentation: K-means clustering with Amazon SageMaker, Building a customized recommender system in Amazon SageMaker)

3.2 Select the appropriate model(s) for a given machine learning problem.

• Xgboost, logistic regression, K-means, linear regression, decision trees, random forests, RNN, CNN, Ensemble, Transfer learning (AWS Documentation: XGBoost Algorithm, K-means clustering with Amazon SageMaker, Forecasting financial time series, Amazon Forecast can now use Convolutional Neural Networks, Detecting hidden but non-trivial problems in transfer learning models)
• Express intuition behind models

3.3 Train machine learning models.

• Train validation test split, cross-validation (AWS Documentation: Train a Model, Incremental Training, Managed Spot Training, Validate a Machine Learning Model, Cross-Validation, Model support, metrics, and validation, Splitting Your Data)
• Optimizer, gradient descent, loss functions, local minima, convergence, batches, probability, etc.
• Compute choice (GPU vs. CPU, distributed vs. non-distributed, platform [Spark vs. non-Spark]) (AWS Documentation: Introduction to Apache Spark)
• Model updates and retraining (AWS Documentation: Retraining Models on New Data, Automating model retraining and deployment)
  • Batch vs. real-time/online

3.4 Perform hyperparameter optimization.

• Regularization (AWS Documentation: Training Parameters)
  • Drop out
  • L1/L2
• Cross validation (AWS Documentation: Cross-Validation)
• Model initialization
• Neural network architecture (layers/nodes), learning rate, activation functions
• Tree-based models (# of trees, # of levels)
• Linear models (learning rate)

3.5 Evaluate machine learning models.

• Avoid overfitting/underfitting (detect and handle bias and variance) (AWS Documentation: Underfitting vs. Overfitting, Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency, Amazon SageMaker Clarify)
• Metrics (AUC-ROC, accuracy, precision, recall, RMSE, F1 score)
• Confusion matrix (AWS Documentation: Custom classifier metrics)
• Offline and online model evaluation, A/B testing (AWS Documentation: Validate a Machine Learning Model, Machine Learning Lens)
• Compare models using metrics (time to train a model, quality of model, engineering costs) (AWS Documentation: Easily monitor and visualize metrics while training models, Model Quality Metrics, Monitor model quality)
• Cross validation (AWS Documentation: Cross-Validation, Model support, metrics, and validation)

Domain 4: Machine Learning Implementation and Operations

4.1 Build machine learning solutions for performance, availability, scalability, resiliency, and fault tolerance. (AWS Documentation: Review the ML Model’s Predictive Performance, Best practices, Resilience in Amazon SageMaker)

• AWS environment logging and monitoring (AWS Documentation: Logging and Monitoring)
  • CloudTrail and CloudWatch (AWS Documentation: Logging Amazon ML API Calls with AWS CloudTrail, Log Amazon SageMaker API Calls, Monitoring Amazon ML, Monitor Amazon SageMaker)
  • Build error monitoring (AWS Documentation: ML Platform Monitoring)
• Multiple regions, Multiple AZs (AWS Documentation: Regions and Endpoints, Best practices)
• AMI/golden image (AWS Documentation: AWS Deep Learning AMI)
• Docker containers (AWS Documentation: Why use Docker containers for machine learning development, Using Docker containers with SageMaker)
• Rightsizing
  • Instances (AWS Documentation: Ensure efficient compute resources on Amazon SageMaker)
  • Provisioned IOPS (AWS Documentation: Optimizing I/O for GPU performance tuning of deep learning)
  • Volumes (AWS Documentation: Customize your notebook volume size, up to 16 TB)
• Load balancing (AWS Documentation: Managing your machine learning lifecycle)

4.2 Recommend and implement the appropriate machine learning services and features for a given problem.

• ML on AWS (application services)
  • Poly (AWS Documentation: Amazon Polly, Build a unique Brand Voice with Amazon Polly)
  • Lex (AWS Documentation: Amazon Lex, Build more effective conversations on Amazon Lex)
  • Transcribe (AWS Documentation: Amazon Transcribe, Transcribe speech to text in real time)
• AWS service limits (AWS Documentation: Amazon SageMaker endpoints and quotas, Amazon Machine Learning endpoints and quotas, System Limits)
• Build your own model vs. SageMaker built-in algorithms (AWS Documentation: Use Amazon SageMaker Built-in Algorithms or Pre-trained Models)
• Infrastructure: (spot, instance types), cost considerations (AWS Documentation: Instance Types for Built-in Algorithms)
  • Using spot instances to train deep learning models using AWS Batch (AWS Documentation: Train Deep Learning Models on GPUs)

4.3 Apply basic AWS security practices to machine learning solutions.

• IAM (AWS Documentation: Controlling Access to Amazon ML Resources, Identity and Access Management in AWS Deep Learning Containers)
• S3 bucket policies (AWS Documentation: Using Amazon S3 with Amazon ML, Granting Amazon ML Permissions to Read Your Data from Amazon S3)
• Security groups (AWS Documentation: Secure multi-account model deployment with Amazon SageMaker, Use an AWS Deep Learning AMI)
• VPC (AWS Documentation: Securing Amazon SageMaker Studio connectivity, Direct access to Amazon SageMaker notebooks, Building secure machine learning environments)
• Encryption/anonymization (AWS Documentation: Protect Data at Rest Using Encryption, Protecting Data in Transit with Encryption, Anonymize and manage data in your data lake)

4.4 Deploy and operationalize machine learning solutions.

• Exposing endpoints and interacting with them (AWS Documentation: Creating a machine learning-powered REST API, Call an Amazon SageMaker model endpoint)
• ML model versioning (AWS Documentation: Model versioning, Register a Model Version)
• A/B testing (AWS Documentation: A/B Testing ML models in production, Dynamic A/B testing for machine learning models)
• Retrain pipelines (AWS Documentation: Automating model retraining and deployment, Machine Learning Lens)
• ML debugging/troubleshooting (AWS Documentation: Debug Your Machine Learning Models, Analyzing open-source ML pipeline models in real time, Troubleshoot Amazon SageMaker model deployments)
  • Detect and mitigate drop in performance (AWS Documentation: Identify bottlenecks, improve resource utilization, and reduce ML training costs, Optimizing I/O for GPU performance tuning of deep learning training)

To know more details about the Exam, visit AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam Tutorials.

How difficult is the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam?

Even if you don’t have the minimum years of experience, you can still get the ML – Specialty certification. The test, however, is not a standard AWS certification that simply asks questions on AWS-related services; it also asks a lot of questions about DS. Preparing for the AWS Machine Learning Expertise test is a demanding endeavor that requires a lot of devotion and hard effort, as well as the necessary tools. There are several study and mock test materials accessible online, some of which contain the SAME questions that will be asked on your exam! The vast majority of them actually cover a significant portion of the test material. So keep practicing until you’re quite certain you can answer the questions on the mock examinations.

Let us now jump to the resources that you can use for the preparation for this exam.

Learning resources for the exam

There are a lot of resources out there, but we need to figure out which ones will be useful to us. We can obtain more in less time thanks to the resources. This will allow you to have more time for practise and corrections. Let’s have a look at some resources that will help you pass the exam with flying colors:

1. AWS Machine Learning Documentation

For studying for the AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty test, the official documentation from AWS is a useful resource. The AWS official material is a good resource for understanding the numerous sub-topics necessary for the machine learning speciality certification test. Data splitting, machine learning model types, and data transformations are examples of Amazon machine learning concepts that have documentation. Reading Materials for the AWS Machine Learning Specialty Exam –

• Concepts of Amazon Machine Learning
• Also, Functionality of Machine Learning on AWS
• Furthermore, Machine Learning Models
• Additionally, Splitting of Data
• Also, Concept of Data Transformations

2. AWS Machine Learning Specialty References

There are numerous references for the AWS Machine Learning Specialty exam available both online and offline. However, many websites offer online exam preparation with full course support, such as Simplilearn, Testprep training, Pluralsight, and Udemy.

3. Discussion Forums

Numerous websites provide useful information and also topic specifics about the certification. Additionally, This can be useful if you have any questions or want to learn more about the exam. Answers.com, Quora, and Stackoverflow are a few examples.

4.Training at AWS

The AWS Machine Learning Certification Training exam is available at https://aws.amazon.com/training/. Furthermore, these training require registration and are free of charge. Also, To learn more about AWS services, you can access a variety of Learning libraries.

5. Practice Exams

The AWS Machine Learning Certification Practice Exam is everything you’ll need to double-check your preparations. To increase speed and preparedness, utilize practice sets of questions. Some websites provide practice exams and also assess you depending on your AWS cloud skills and expertise. Practice Sets are also available on Amazon, albeit not all topics will be covered. A huge number of practice sets of questions for the AWS Machine Learning Specialty exam are also available from Testprep Training.

All you need to check your preparations is the AWS Machine Learning Certification Practice Exam. Practice sets of questions can be used to improve speed and preparation. Some websites offer practice tests and also validate you based on your skills and knowledge of the AWS cloud. You can also look for practice sets on Amazon, though not all topics will be covered. Moreover, Testprep Training provides a large number of practice sets of questions for the

Expert Advice

Professionals may use the AWS Machine Learning Specialty test to further their careers and gain access to new opportunities. However, it is essential that you concentrate on grasping test subjects and properly preparing for the exam in order to achieve this. It’s important to practise and get into the right mindset for this. So, best of luck in passing the exam.