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]

According to the web search results, RunInference API1 is a feature of Apache Beam that enables you to run models as part of your pipeline in a way that is optimized for machine learning inference. RunInference API supports features like batching, caching, and model reloading. RunInference API can be used with various frameworks, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, Sklearn, XGBoost, ONNX, and TensorRT1. Dataflow2 is a fully managed service for running Apache Beam pipelines on Google Cloud. Dataflow handles the provisioning and management of the compute resources, as well as the optimization and execution of the pipelines. Therefore, option D is the best way to reconfigure the architecture for the given use case, as it allows you to use the RunInference API with watchFilePattern in a Dataflow job that wraps around the model and serves predictions. This way, you can minimize prediction latency and the effort required to update the model, as the RunInference API will automatically reload the model from the Cloud Storage bucket whenever there is a change in the model file1. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• RunInference API
• Dataflow
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

BigQuery ML is a powerful tool that allows you to build and deploy machine learning models directly within BigQuery, Google's fully-managed, serverless data warehouse. It allows you to create regression models using SQL, which is a familiar and easy-to-use language for many data scientists. It also allows you to scale smoothly and require minimal development work since you don't have to worry about cluster management and it's fully-managed by Google.

BigQuery ML also allows you to run your training on the same data where it's stored, this will minimize data movement, and thus minimize cost and time.

References:

• BigQuery ML
• BigQuery ML for regression
• BigQuery ML for scalability

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

 The best way to distribute the training examples across the train-test-eval subsets while maintaining the 80-10-10 proportion is to use option C. This option ensures that each subset contains a balanced and representative sample of the different classes (Democrat and Republican) and the different authors. This way, the model can learn from a diverse and comprehensive set of articles and avoid overfitting or underfitting. Option C also avoids the problem of data leakage, which occurs when the same author appears in more than one subset, potentially biasing the model and inflating its performance. Therefore, option C is the most suitable technique for this use case.

Data Catalog is a fully managed and scalable metadata management service that allows you to quickly discover, manage, and understand your data in Google Cloud. You can use Data Catalog to search the BigQuery datasets by using keywords in the table description, as well as other metadata attributes such as table name, column name, labels, tags, and more. Data Catalog also provides a rich browsing experience that lets you explore the schema, preview the data, and access the BigQuery console directly from the Data Catalog UI. Data Catalog helps you find the data that you need for your model building on AI Platform without writing any code or queries.

References:

• [Data Catalog documentation]
• [Data Catalog overview]
• [Searching for data assets]

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”. Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API2 is a service that provides programmatic access to a powerful detection engine for personally identifiable information and other privacy-sensitive data in unstructured data streams, such as text blocks and images. Cloud DLP API helps you discover, classify, and protect your sensitive data by using techniques such as de-identification, masking, tokenization, and bucketing. You can use Cloud DLP API to de-identify the PII data before performing data exploration and preprocessing, and retain the data utility for ML purposes. Therefore, option A is the best way to perform data exploration and preprocessing while ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive fields. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

The best option for optimizing the data processing pipeline for run time and compute resources utilization is to embed the augmentation functions dynamically in the tf.Data pipeline. This option has the following advantages:

• It allows the data augmentation to be performed on the fly, without creating or storing additional copies of the data. This saves storage space and reduces the data transfer time.
• It leverages the parallelism and performance of the tf.Data API, which can efficiently apply the augmentation functions to multiple batches of data in parallel, using multiple CPU cores or GPU devices. The tf.Data API also supports various optimization techniques, such as caching, prefetching, and autotuning, to improve the data processing speed and reduce the latency.
• It integrates seamlessly with the TensorFlow and Keras models, which can consume the tf.Data datasets as inputs for training and evaluation. The tf.Data API also supports various data formats, such as images, text, audio, and video, and various data sources, such as files, databases, and web services.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

• Option B: Embedding the augmentation functions dynamically as part of Keras generators introduces some limitations and overhead. Keras generators are Python generators that yield batches of data for training or evaluation. However, Keras generators are not compatible with the tf.distribute API, which is used to distribute the training across multiple devices or machines. Moreover, Keras generators are not as efficient or scalable as the tf.Data API, as they run on a single Python thread and do not support parallelism or optimization techniques.
• Option C: Using Dataflow to create all possible augmentations, and store them as TFRecords introduces additional complexity and cost. Dataflow is a fully managed service that runs Apache Beam pipelines for data processing and transformation. However, using Dataflow to create all possible augmentations requires generating and storing a large number of augmented images, which can consume a lot of storage space and incur storage and network costs. Moreover, using Dataflow to create the augmentations requires writing and deploying a separate Dataflow pipeline, which can be tedious and time-consuming.
• Option D: Using Dataflow to create the augmentations dynamically per training run, and stage them as TFRecords introduces additional complexity and latency. Dataflow is a fully managed service that runs Apache Beam pipelines for data processing and transformation. However, using Dataflow to create the augmentations dynamically per training run requires running a Dataflow pipeline every time the model is trained, which can introduce latency and delay the training process. Moreover, using Dataflow to create the augmentations requires writing and deploying a separate Dataflow pipeline, which can be tedious and time-consuming.

References:

• [tf.data: Build TensorFlow input pipelines]
• [Image augmentation | TensorFlow Core]
• [Dataflow documentation]

 The best option for building a recommendation system without any user event data is to use simple heuristics based on content metadata. This is a type of content-based filtering, which recommends items that are similar to the ones that the user has interacted with or selected, based on their attributes. For example, if a user selects a comedy movie from the US released in 2020, the system can recommend other comedy movies from the US released in 2020 or nearby years. This approach does not require any machine learning, but it can leverage the existing metadata of the videos to provide relevant recommendations. It also allows the system to start collecting user event data, such as views, likes, ratings, etc., which can be used to train a more sophisticated machine learning model in the future, such as a collaborative filtering model or a hybrid model that combines content and collaborative information. References:

• Recommendation Systems
• Content-Based Filtering
• Collaborative Filtering
• Hybrid Recommender Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

• 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]

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

• Option A is incorrect because converting each categorical value into an integer value is not a good way to encode categorical values with high cardinality. This method implies an ordinal relationship between the categories, which may not be true. For example, assigning the values 1, 2, and 3 to the categories “red”, “green”, and “blue” does not make sense, as there is no inherent order among these colors1.
• Option B is correct because converting the categorical string data to one-hot hash buckets is a suitable way to encode categorical values with high cardinality. This method uses a hash function to map each category to a fixed-length vector of binary values, where only one element is 1 and the rest are 0. This method preserves the sparsity and independence of the categories, and reduces the dimensionality of the input space2.
• Option C is incorrect because mapping the categorical variables into a vector of boolean values is not a valid way to encode categorical values with high cardinality. This method implies that each category can be represented by a combination of true/false values, which may not be possible for a large number of categories. For example, if there are 10,000 categories, then there are 2^10,000 possible combinations of boolean values, which is impractical to store and process3.
• Option D is incorrect because converting each categorical value into a run-length encoded string is not a useful way to encode categorical values with high cardinality. This method compresses a string by replacing consecutive repeated characters with the character and the number of repetitions. For example, “AAAABBBCC” becomes “A4B3C2”. This method does not reduce the dimensionality of the input space, and does not preserve the semantic meaning of the categories4.

References:

• Encoding categorical features
• One-hot hash buckets
• Boolean vector
• Run-length encoding

 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

AI Platform Notebooks is a service that provides managed Jupyter notebooks for data science and machine learning. You can use AI Platform Notebooks to create, run, and share your code and analysis in a collaborative and interactive environment1. BigQuery is a service that allows you to analyze large-scale and complex data using SQL queries. You can use BigQuery to stream, store, and query your data in a fast and cost-effective way2. Pandas is a popular Python library that provides data structures and tools for data analysis and manipulation. You can use pandas to create, manipulate, and visualize dataframes, which are tabular data structures with rows and columns3.

AI Platform Notebooks provides a cell magic, %%bigquery, that allows you to run SQL queries on BigQuery data and ingest the results as a pandas dataframe. A cell magic is a special command that applies to the whole cell in a Jupyter notebook. The %%bigquery cell magic can take various arguments, such as the name of the destination dataframe, the name of the destination table in BigQuery, the project ID, and the query parameters4. By using the %%bigquery cell magic, you can query the data in BigQuery with minimal code and manipulate the results with pandas in AI Platform Notebooks. This is the most convenient and efficient way to achieve your goal.

The other options are not as good as option A, because they involve more steps, more code, and more manual effort. Option B requires you to export your table as a CSV file from BigQuery to Google Drive, and then use the Google Drive API to ingest the file into your notebook instance. This option is cumbersome and time-consuming, as it involves moving the data across different services and formats. Option C requires you to download your table from BigQuery as a local CSV file, and then upload it to your AI Platform notebook instance. This option is also inefficient and impractical, as it involves downloading and uploading large files, which can take a long time and consume a lot of bandwidth. Option D requires you to use a bash cell in your AI Platform notebook to export the table as a CSV file to Cloud Storage, and then copy the data into the notebook. This option is also complex and unnecessary, as it involves using different commands and tools to move the data around. Therefore, option A is the best option for this use case.

References:

• AI Platform Notebooks documentation
• BigQuery documentation
• pandas documentation
• Using Jupyter magics to query BigQuery data

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 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

• Option A is correct because importing the TensorFlow model with BigQuery ML, and running the ml.predict function is the easiest way to execute a batch prediction on a large BigQuery table with a custom TensorFlow model, and store the predicted results in another BigQuery table. BigQuery ML allows you to import TensorFlow models that are stored in Cloud Storage, and use them for prediction with SQL queries1. The ml.predict function returns a table with the predicted values, which can be saved to another BigQuery table2.
• Option B is incorrect because using the TensorFlow BigQuery reader to load the data, and using the BigQuery API to write the results to BigQuery requires more effort to build the inference pipeline than option A. The TensorFlow BigQuery reader is a way to read data from BigQuery into TensorFlow datasets, which can be used for training or prediction3. However, this option also requires writing code to load the TensorFlow model, run the prediction, and use the BigQuery API to write the results back to BigQuery4.
• Option C is incorrect because creating a Dataflow pipeline to convert the data in BigQuery to TFRecords, running a batch inference on Vertex AI Prediction, and writing the results to BigQuery requires more effort to build the inference pipeline than option A. Dataflow is a service for creating and running data processing pipelines, such as ETL (extract, transform, load) or batch processing5. Vertex AI Prediction is a service for deploying and serving ML models for online or batch prediction. However, this option also requires writing code to create the Dataflow pipeline, convert the data to TFRecords, run the batch inference, and write the results to BigQuery.
• Option D is incorrect because loading the TensorFlow SavedModel in a Dataflow pipeline, using the BigQuery I/O connector with a custom function to perform the inference within the pipeline, and writing the results to BigQuery requires more effort to build the inference pipeline than option A. The BigQuery I/O connector is a way to read and write data from BigQuery within a Dataflow pipeline. However, this option also requires writing code to load the TensorFlow SavedModel, create the custom function for inference, and write the results to BigQuery.

References:

• Importing models into BigQuery ML
• Using imported models for prediction
• TensorFlow BigQuery reader
• BigQuery API
• Dataflow overview
• [Vertex AI Prediction overview]
• [Batch prediction with Dataflow]
• [BigQuery I/O connector]
• [Using TensorFlow models in Dataflow]

According to the web search results, BigQuery ML1 is a service that allows you to create and execute machine learning models in BigQuery using SQL queries. BigQuery ML supports various types of models, such as linear regression, logistic regression, k-means clustering, matrix factorization, deep neural networks, and time series forecasting1. ARIMA_PLUS2 is a statistical model for time series forecasting that is built in to BigQuery ML. ARIMA_PLUS stands for AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average with eXogenous regressors. ARIMA_PLUS models the relationship between a target variable and its past values, as well as other external factors that might influence the target variable. ARIMA_PLUS can handle multiple time series, seasonality, holidays, and missing values2. Therefore, option C is the best way to use a solution that can be implemented quickly with minimal effort for the given use case, as it allows you to use SQL queries to build and run a forecasting model in BigQuery without moving the data or writing custom code. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• BigQuery ML
• ARIMA_PLUS
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

• Option A is incorrect because creating a new model that uses the raw data and is available in real time would require retraining the model and deploying it again, which is not efficient or scalable.
• Option B is incorrect because using a Dataflow job to transform the incoming data would introduce unnecessary latency and complexity for online prediction, which requires fast and simple processing.
• Option C is incorrect because using Cloud Spanner to stream and query the incoming data would incur high costs and overhead for online prediction, which does not need a relational database.
• Option D is correct because using a Cloud Function to preprocess the data and submit a prediction request to Al Platform is a simple and scalable solution for online prediction, which leverages the serverless and event-driven features of Cloud Functions.

• 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.

Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to create and run scalable and portable ML pipelines on Google Cloud. You can use Vertex AI Pipelines to add a component to divide the data into training and evaluation sets, and add another component for feature engineering. A component is a self-contained piece of code that performs a specific task in the pipeline. You can use the built-in components provided by Vertex AI Pipelines, or create your own custom components. By using Vertex AI Pipelines, you can orchestrate and automate your ML workflow, and track the provenance and lineage of your data and models. You can also enable autologging of metrics in the training component, which is a feature that automatically logs the metrics from your XGBoost model to Vertex AI Experiments. Vertex AI Experiments is a service that allows you to track, compare, and optimize your ML experiments on Google Cloud. You can use Vertex AI Experiments to monitor the training progress, visualize the metrics, and analyze the results of your model. You can also compare models using the artifacts lineage in Vertex ML Metadata. Vertex ML Metadata is a service that stores and manages the metadata of your ML artifacts, such as datasets, models, metrics, and executions. You can use Vertex ML Metadata to view the artifacts lineage, which is a graph that shows the relationships and dependencies among the artifacts. By using the artifacts lineage, you can compare the performance and quality of different models trained in different pipeline executions, and identify the best model for your use case. By using Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Experiments, and Vertex ML Metadata, you can execute the steps required for developing a training pipeline for a new XGBoost classification model based on tabular data stored in a BigQuery table. References:

• Vertex AI Pipelines documentation
• Vertex AI Experiments documentation
• Vertex ML Metadata documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

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

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”. Vertex AI AutoML Forecasting2 is a service that allows you to train and deploy custom time-series forecasting models for batch prediction. Vertex AI AutoML Forecasting simplifies the model development process by providing a graphical user interface and a no-code approach. You can use Vertex AI AutoML Forecasting to train a model by using your tabular data, and specify the target variable, the covariates, and the time variable. Vertex AI AutoML Forecasting automatically handles the feature engineering, model selection, and hyperparameter tuning. Therefore, option D is the best way to maximize the speed of model development and testing for the given use case. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Vertex AI AutoML Forecasting
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

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

• Option A is incorrect because Vertex AI Pipelines and App Engine do not meet all the requirements of the system. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to create, run, and manage ML workflows using TensorFlow Extended (TFX) components or custom components1. App Engine is a service that allows you to build and deploy scalable web applications using standard or flexible environments2. However, App Engine does not support Docker containers in the standard environment, and does not provide a dedicated service for online prediction and monitoring of ML models3.
• Option B is correct because Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Prediction, and Vertex AI Model Monitoring meet all the requirements of the system. Vertex AI Prediction is a service that allows you to deploy and serve ML models for online or batch prediction, with support for autoscaling and custom containers4. Vertex AI Model Monitoring is a service that allows you to monitor the performance and fairness of your deployed models, and get alerts for any issues or anomalies5.
• Option C is incorrect because Cloud Composer, BigQuery ML, and Vertex AI Prediction do not meet all the requirements of the system. Cloud Composer is a service that allows you to create, schedule, and manage workflows using Apache Airflow. BigQuery ML is a service that allows you to create and use ML models within BigQuery using SQL queries. However, BigQuery ML does not support custom containers, and Vertex AI Prediction does not support scheduled model retraining or model monitoring.
• Option D is incorrect because Cloud Composer, Vertex AI Training with custom containers, and App Engine do not meet all the requirements of the system. Vertex AI Training is a service that allows you to train ML models using built-in algorithms or custom containers. However, Vertex AI Training does not support online prediction or model monitoring, and App Engine does not support Docker containers in the standard environment or online prediction and monitoring of ML models3.

References:

• Vertex AI Pipelines overview
• App Engine overview
• Choosing an App Engine environment
• Vertex AI Prediction overview
• Vertex AI Model Monitoring overview
• [Cloud Composer overview]
• [BigQuery ML overview]
• [BigQuery ML limitations]
• [Vertex AI Training overview]

BigQuery ML is a service that allows you to create and train ML models using SQL queries. You can use BigQuery ML to train an AutoML regression model, which is a type of model that automatically selects the best features and architecture for your data. You can also specify Vertex AI as the model registry, which is a service that allows you to store and manage your ML models. By using Vertex AI as the model registry, you can easily deploy your model to a Vertex AI endpoint, which is a service that allows you to serve your ML models online and scale them automatically. By using BigQuery ML, Vertex AI model registry, and Vertex AI endpoint, you can deploy your model for online prediction as quickly as possible, without having to export, import, or retrain your model. References:

• BigQuery ML documentation
• Vertex AI documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

 The best options for adjusting the training parameters in AutoML to improve model performance are to decrease the score threshold and add more positive examples to the training set. These options can help increase the detection rate of fraudulent transactions, which is the priority for this use case. The score threshold is a parameter that determines the minimum probability score that a prediction must have to be classified as positive. Decreasing the score threshold can increase the recall of the model, which is the proportion of actual positive cases that are correctly identified. Increasing the recall can help reduce the number of false negatives, which are fraudulent transactions that are missed by the model. However, decreasing the score threshold can also decrease the precision of the model, which is the proportion of positive predictions that are actually correct. Decreasing the precision can increase the number of false positives, which are legitimate transactions that are flagged as fraudulent by the model. Therefore, there is a trade-off between recall and precision, and the optimal score threshold depends on the business objective and the cost of errors1. Adding more positive examples to the training set can help balance the data distribution and improve the model performance. Positive examples are the instances that belong to the target class, which in this case are fraudulent transactions. Negative examples are the instances that belong to the other class, which in this case are legitimate transactions. Fraudulent transactions are usually rare and imbalanced compared to legitimate transactions, which can cause the model to be biased towards the majority class and fail to learn the characteristics of the minority class. Adding more positive examples can help the model learn more features and patterns of the fraudulent transactions, and increase the detection rate2.

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

• Option A: Increasing the score threshold would decrease the detection rate of fraudulent transactions, which is the opposite of the desired outcome. Increasing the score threshold would decrease the recall of the model, which is the proportion of actual positive cases that are correctly identified. Decreasing the recall would increase the number of false negatives, which are fraudulent transactions that are missed by the model. Increasing the score threshold would increase the precision of the model, which is the proportion of positive predictions that are actually correct. Increasing the precision would decrease the number of false positives, which are legitimate transactions that are flagged as fraudulent by the model. However, in this use case, the cost of false negatives is much higher than the cost of false positives, so increasing the score threshold is not a good option1.
• Option D: Adding more negative examples to the training set would not improve the model performance, and could worsen the data imbalance. Negative examples are the instances that belong to the other class, which in this case are legitimate transactions. Legitimate transactions are usually abundant and dominant compared to fraudulent transactions, which can cause the model to be biased towards the majority class and fail to learn the characteristics of the minority class. Adding more negative examples would exacerbate this problem, and decrease the detection rate of the fraudulent transactions2.
• Option E: Reducing the maximum number of node hours for training would not improve the model performance, and could limit the model optimization. Node hours are the units of computation that are used to train an AutoML model. The maximum number of node hours is a parameter that determines the upper limit of node hours that can be used for training. Reducing the maximum number of node hours would reduce the training time and cost, but also the model quality and accuracy. Reducing the maximum number of node hours would limit the number of iterations, trials, and evaluations that the model can perform, and prevent the model from finding the optimal hyperparameters and architecture3.

References:

• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 5: Responsible AI, Week 4: Evaluation
• Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 2: Developing high-quality ML models, 2.2 Handling imbalanced data
• Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 4: Low-code ML Solutions, Section 4.3: AutoML
• Understanding the score threshold slider
• Handling imbalanced data sets in machine learning
• AutoML Vision pricing

• Precision measures the fraction of messages flagged by the model that are actually inappropriate, while recall measures the fraction of inappropriate messages that are flagged by the model. These metrics are useful for evaluating how well the model can identify and filter out inappropriate comments.
• Option A is not a good metric because it does not account for the accuracy of the model. The model might flag many messages that are not inappropriate, or miss many messages that are inappropriate.
• Option B is better than option A, but it still does not account for the recall of the model. The model might flag only a few messages that are highly likely to be inappropriate, but miss many other messages that are less obvious but still inappropriate.
• Option C is not a good metric because it does not focus on the messages that are flagged by the model. The random sample of 0.1% of raw messages might contain very few inappropriate messages, making the precision and recall estimates unreliable.

• 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]

Vertex AI Feature Store provides two options for online serving: Bigtable and optimized online serving. Both options support autoscaling, which means that the number of online serving nodes can automatically adjust to the traffic demand. By enabling autoscaling, you can improve the online serving performance and reduce the feature retrieval latency during the daily batch ingestion. Autoscaling also helps you optimize the cost and resource utilization of your featurestore. References:

• Online serving | Vertex AI | Google Cloud
• New Vertex AI Feature Store: BigQuery-Powered, GenAI-Ready | Google Cloud Blog

Data leakage is a problem where information from outside the training dataset is used to create the model, resulting in an overly optimistic or invalid estimate of the model performance. Data leakage can occur in time series data when the temporal order of the data is not preserved during data preparation or model evaluation. For example, if the data is shuffled before splitting into train and test sets, or if future data is used to impute missing values in past data, then data leakage can occur.

One way to address data leakage in time series data is to apply nested cross-validation during model training. Nested cross-validation is a technique that allows you to perform both model selection and model evaluation in a robust way, while preserving the temporal order of the data. Nested cross-validation involves two levels of cross-validation: an inner loop for model selection and an outer loop for model evaluation. The inner loop splits the training data into k folds, trains and tunes the model on k-1 folds, and validates the model on the remaining fold. The inner loop repeats this process for each fold and selects the best model based on the validation performance. The outer loop splits the data into n folds, trains the best model from the inner loop on n-1 folds, and tests the model on the remaining fold. The outer loop repeats this process for each fold and evaluates the model performance based on the test results.

Nested cross-validation can help to avoid data leakage in time series data by ensuring that the model is trained and tested on non-overlapping data, and that the data used for validation is never seen by the model during training. Nested cross-validation can also provide a more reliable estimate of the model performance than a single train-test split or a simple cross-validation, as it reduces the variance and bias of the estimate.

References:

• Data Leakage in Machine Learning
• How to Avoid Data Leakage When Performing Data Preparation
• Classification on a single time series - prevent leakage between train and test

The best option for scaling a Vertex AI endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, using a scikit-learn model that is deployed to a Vertex AI endpoint and tested on live production traffic, is to configure an appropriate minReplicaCount value based on expected baseline traffic. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to automatically scale your endpoint resources according to the traffic patterns. 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. Vertex AI can also provide various tools and services for data analysis, model development, model deployment, model monitoring, and model governance. A minReplicaCount value is a parameter that specifies the minimum number of replicas that the endpoint must always have, regardless of the load. A minReplicaCount value can help you ensure that the endpoint has enough resources to handle the expected baseline traffic, and avoid high latency or errors. By configuring an appropriate minReplicaCount value based on expected baseline traffic, you can scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future. You can set the minReplicaCount value when you deploy the model to the endpoint, or update it later. Vertex AI will automatically scale up or down the number of replicas within the range of the minReplicaCount and maxReplicaCount values, based on the target utilization percentage and the autoscaling metric1.

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

• Option A: Deploying two models to the same endpoint and distributing requests among them evenly would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could increase the complexity and cost of the deployment process. 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 help you experiment and iterate on your model, and improve the model performance and accuracy. 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 deploying two models to the same endpoint and distributing requests among them evenly, you can create a load balancing mechanism that can distribute the traffic across the models, and reduce the load on each model. However, deploying two models to the same endpoint and distributing requests among them evenly would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could increase the complexity and cost of the deployment process. You would need to write code, create and configure the two models, deploy the models to the same endpoint, and distribute the requests among them evenly. Moreover, this option would not use the autoscaling feature of Vertex AI, which can automatically adjust the number of replicas based on the traffic patterns, and provide various benefits, such as optimal resource utilization, cost savings, and performance improvement2.
• Option C: Setting the target utilization percentage in the autoscalingMetricSpecs configuration to a higher value would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could cause errors or poor performance. A target utilization percentage is a parameter that specifies the desired utilization level of each replica. A target utilization percentage can affect the speed and accuracy of the autoscaling process. A higher target utilization percentage can help you reduce the number of replicas, but it can also cause high latency, low throughput, or resource exhaustion. By setting the target utilization percentage in the autoscalingMetricSpecs configuration to a higher value, you can increase the utilization level of each replica, and save some resources. However, setting the target utilization percentage in the autoscalingMetricSpecs configuration to a higher value would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and configure the autoscalingMetricSpecs, and set the target utilization percentage to a higher value. Moreover, this option would not ensure that the endpoint has enough resources to handle the expected baseline traffic, which could cause high latency or errors1.
• Option D: Changing the model’s machine type to one that utilizes GPUs would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could increase the complexity and cost of the deployment process. A machine type is a parameter that specifies the type of virtual machine that the prediction service uses for the deployed model. A machine type can affect the speed and accuracy of the prediction process. A machine type that utilizes GPUs can help you accelerate the computation and processing of the prediction, and handle more prediction requests at the same time. By changing the model’s machine type to one that utilizes GPUs, you can improve the prediction performance and efficiency of your model. However, changing the model’s machine type to one that utilizes GPUs would not allow you to scale your endpoint efficiently when the demand increases in the future, and could increase the complexity and cost of the deployment process. You would need to write code, create and configure the model, deploy the model to the endpoint, and change the machine type to one that utilizes GPUs. Moreover, this option would not use the autoscaling feature of Vertex AI, which can automatically adjust the number of replicas based on the traffic patterns, and provide various benefits, such as optimal resource utilization, cost savings, and performance improvement2.

References:

• Configure compute resources for prediction | Vertex AI | Google Cloud
• Deploy a model to an endpoint | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

Vertex AI Feature Store is a service that allows you to store and manage your ML features on Google Cloud. You can use Vertex AI Feature Store to store features such as parcels delivered and truck locations over time, and retrieve them with low latency for online prediction. Online prediction is a type of prediction that provides low-latency responses to individual or small batches of input data. You can also use Vertex AI Feature Store to retrieve historical data at a specific point in time for model training. Model training is a process of learning the parameters of a ML model from data. By using Vertex AI Feature Store, you can store the features with minimal effort, and avoid the complexity of managing your own data storage and serving system. References:

• Vertex AI Feature Store documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

 Comparing the training and evaluation losses of the current run is a good way to check if the model is overfitting or underfitting. If the losses are similar, it means that the model is generalizing well and can be deployed to a Vertex AI endpoint. Vertex AI endpoint is a service that allows you to serve your ML models online and scale them automatically. By using a training/serving skew threshold model monitoring, you can detect if there is a significant difference between the data used for training and the data used for serving. This can indicate that the model is becoming stale or inaccurate over time. When the model monitoring threshold is triggered, it means that the model needs to be retrained with the latest data. By redeploying the pipeline, you can automate the retraining process and update the model with the new data. This way, you can minimize the cost of retraining and ensure that your model is always up-to-date and accurate. References:

• Vertex AI documentation
• Vertex AI endpoint documentation
• Model monitoring documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

A ResourceExhaustedError: out of memory (OOM) when allocating tensor is an error that occurs when the GPU runs out of memory while trying to allocate memory for a tensor. A tensor is a multi-dimensional array of numbers that represents the data or the parameters of a machine learning model. The size and shape of a tensor depend on various factors, such as the input data, the model architecture, the batch size, and the optimization algorithm1.

For the use case of training a computer vision model that predicts the type of government ID present in a given image using a GPU-powered virtual machine on Compute Engine, the best option to resolve the error is to reduce the batch size. The batch size is a parameter that determines how many input examples are processed at a time by the model. A larger batch size can improve the model’s accuracy and stability, but it also requires more memory and computation. A smaller batch size can reduce the memory and computation requirements, but it may also affect the model’s performance and convergence2.

By reducing the batch size, the GPU can allocate less memory for each tensor, and avoid running out of memory. Reducing the batch size can also speed up the training process, as the GPU can process more batches in parallel. However, reducing the batch size too much may also have some drawbacks, such as increasing the noise and variance of the gradient updates, and slowing down the convergence of the model. Therefore, the optimal batch size should be chosen based on the trade-off between memory, computation, and performance3.

The other options are not as effective as option B, because they are not directly related to the memory allocation of the GPU. Option A, changing the optimizer, may affect the speed and quality of the optimization process, but it may not reduce the memory usage of the model. Option C, changing the learning rate, may affect the convergence and stability of the model, but it may not reduce the memory usage of the model. Option D, reducing the image shape, may reduce the size of the input tensor, but it may also reduce the quality and resolution of the image, and affect the model’s accuracy. Therefore, option B, reducing the batch size, is the best answer for this question.

References:

• ResourceExhaustedError: OOM when allocating tensor with shape - Stack Overflow
• How does batch size affect model performance and training time? - Stack Overflow
• How to choose an optimal batch size for training a neural network? - Stack Overflow

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 best option for handling missing data in this case is to predict the missing values using linear regression. Linear regression is a supervised learning technique that can be used to estimate the relationship between a continuous target variable and one or more predictor variables. In this case, the target variable is the distance from the closest school, and the predictor variables are the other features in the dataset, such as house size, location, number of rooms, etc. By fitting a linear regression model on the data that has no missing values, we can then use the model to predict the missing values for the distance from the closest school feature. This way, we can preserve all the instances in the dataset and avoid introducing bias or reducing variance. The other options are not suitable for handling missing data in this case, because:

• Deleting the rows that have missing values would reduce the size of the dataset and potentially lose important information. Since every instance is important, we want to keep as much data as possible.
• Applying feature crossing with another column that does not have missing values would create a new feature that combines the values of two existing features. This might increase the complexity of the model and introduce noise or multicollinearity. It would not solve the problem of missing values, as the new feature would still have missing values whenever the distance from the closest school feature is missing.
• Replacing the missing values with zeros would distort the distribution of the feature and introduce bias. It would also imply that the houses with missing values are located at the same distance from the closest school, which is unlikely to be true. A zero value might also be outside the range of the feature, as the distance from the closest school is unlikely to be exactly zero for any house. References:
• Linear Regression
• Imputation of missing values
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certification
• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

• Option A is correct because using BigQuery ML to run several regression models, and analyze their performance is the most efficient and self-serviced way to complete the task. BigQuery ML is a service that allows you to create and use ML models within BigQuery using SQL queries1. You can use BigQuery ML to run different types of regression models, such as linear regression, logistic regression, or DNN regression2. You can also use BigQuery ML to analyze the performance of your models, such as the mean squared error, the accuracy, or the ROC curve3. BigQuery ML is fast, scalable, and easy to use, as it does not require any data movement, coding, or additional tools4.
• Option B is incorrect because reading the data from BigQuery using Dataproc, and running several models using SparkML is not the most efficient and self-serviced way to complete the task. Dataproc is a service that allows you to create and manage clusters of virtual machines that run Apache Spark and other open-source tools5. SparkML is a library that provides ML algorithms and utilities for Spark. However, this option requires more effort and resources than option A, as it involves moving the data from BigQuery to Dataproc, creating and configuring the clusters, writing and running the SparkML code, and analyzing the results.
• Option C is incorrect because using Vertex AI Workbench user-managed notebooks with scikit-learn code for a variety of ML algorithms and performance metrics is not the most efficient and self-serviced way to complete the task. Vertex AI Workbench is a service that allows you to create and use notebooks for ML development and experimentation. Scikit-learn is a library that provides ML algorithms and utilities for Python. However, this option also requires more effort and resources than option A, as it involves creating and managing the notebooks, writing and running the scikit-learn code, and analyzing the results.
• Option D is incorrect because training a custom TensorFlow model with Vertex AI, reading the data from BigQuery featuring a variety of ML algorithms is not the most efficient and self-serviced way to complete the task. TensorFlow is a framework that allows you to create and train ML models using Python or other languages. Vertex AI is a service that allows you to train and deploy ML models using built-in algorithms or custom containers. However, this option also requires more effort and resources than option A, as it involves writing and running the TensorFlow code, creating and managing the training jobs, and analyzing the results.

References:

• BigQuery ML overview
• Creating a model in BigQuery ML
• Evaluating a model in BigQuery ML
• BigQuery ML benefits
• Dataproc overview
• [SparkML overview]
• [Vertex AI Workbench overview]
• [Scikit-learn overview]
• [TensorFlow overview]
• [Vertex AI overview]

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

 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

 The trace in the question shows that the training time is taking longer than expected. This is likely due to the input function not being optimized. To decrease training time in a cost-efficient way, the best option is to rewrite the input function using parallel reads, parallel processing, and prefetch. This will allow the model to process the data more efficiently and decrease training time. References:

• [Cloud TPU Performance Guide]
• [Data input pipeline performance guide]

Medical entity extraction is a task that involves identifying and classifying medical terms or concepts from unstructured textual data, such as electronic health records, clinical notes, or research papers. Medical entity extraction can help with various use cases, such as information retrieval, knowledge discovery, decision support, and data analysis1.

One possible approach to perform medical entity extraction is to use a BERT-based model to fine-tune a medical entity extraction model. BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a pre-trained language model that can capture the contextual information from both left and right sides of a given token2. BERT can be fine-tuned on a specific downstream task, such as medical entity extraction, by adding a task-specific layer on top of the pre-trained model and updating the model parameters with a small amount of labeled data3.

A BERT-based model can achieve high performance on medical entity extraction by leveraging the large-scale pre-training on general-domain corpora and the fine-tuning on domain-specific data. For example, Nesterov and Umerenkov4 proposed a novel method of doing medical entity extraction from electronic health records as a single-step multi-label classification task by fine-tuning a transformer model pre-trained on a large EHR dataset. They showed that their model can achieve human-level quality for most frequent entities.

References:

• 1: Medical Named Entity Recognition from Un-labelled Medical Records based on Pre-trained Language Models and Domain Dictionary | Data Intelligence | MIT Press
• 2: BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding
• 3: Fine-tuning BERT for Medical Entity Extraction
• 4: Distantly supervised end-to-end medical entity extraction from electronic health records with human-level quality

The best option for parametrizing the model training in Kubeflow Pipelines is to add a ContainerOp to the pipeline that spins a Dataproc cluster, runs a transformation, and then saves the transformed data in Cloud Storage. This option has the following advantages:

• It allows the data transformation to be performed as part of the Kubeflow Pipeline, which can ensure the consistency and reproducibility of the data processing and the model training. By adding a ContainerOp to the pipeline, you can define the parameters and the logic of the data transformation step, and integrate it with the other steps of the pipeline, such as the model training and evaluation.
• It leverages the scalability and performance of Dataproc, which is a fully managed service that runs Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop clusters on Google Cloud. By spinning a Dataproc cluster, you can run the PySpark transformation on the Parquet files stored in the Hive table, and take advantage of the parallelism and speed of Spark. Dataproc also supports various features and integrations, such as autoscaling, preemptible VMs, and connectors to other Google Cloud services, that can optimize the data processing and reduce the cost.
• It simplifies the data storage and access, as the transformed data is saved in Cloud Storage, which is a scalable, durable, and secure object storage service. By saving the transformed data in Cloud Storage, you can avoid the overhead and complexity of managing the data in the Hive table or the Parquet files. Moreover, you can easily access the transformed data from Cloud Storage, using various tools and frameworks, such as TensorFlow, BigQuery, or Vertex AI.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

• Option A: Removing the data transformation step from the pipeline eliminates the parametrization of the model training, as the data processing and the model training are decoupled and independent. This option requires running the PySpark transformation separately from the Kubeflow Pipeline, which can introduce inconsistency and unreproducibility in the data processing and the model training. Moreover, this option requires managing the data in the Hive table or the Parquet files, which can be cumbersome and inefficient.
• Option B: Containerizing the PySpark transformation step, and adding it to the pipeline introduces additional complexity and overhead. This option requires creating and maintaining a Docker image that can run the PySpark transformation, which can be challenging and time-consuming. Moreover, this option requires running the PySpark transformation on a single container, which can be slow and inefficient, as it does not leverage the parallelism and performance of Spark.
• Option D: Deploying Apache Spark at a separate node pool in a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster, and adding a ContainerOp to the pipeline that invokes a corresponding transformation job for this Spark instance introduces additional complexity and cost. This option requires creating and managing a separate node pool in a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster, which is a fully managed service that runs Kubernetes clusters on Google Cloud. Moreover, this option requires deploying and running Apache Spark on the node pool, which can be tedious and costly, as it requires configuring and maintaining the Spark cluster, and paying for the node pool usage.

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

The training time of a machine learning model depends on several factors, such as the complexity of the model, the size of the data, the hardware resources, and the hyperparameters. To minimize the training time without significantly compromising the accuracy of the model, one should optimize these factors as much as possible.

One of the factors that can have a significant impact on the training time is the scale-tier parameter, which specifies the type and number of machines to use for the training job on AI Platform. The scale-tier parameter can be one of the predefined values, such as BASIC, STANDARD_1, PREMIUM_1, or BASIC_GPU, or a custom value that allows you to configure the machine type, the number of workers, and the number of parameter servers1

To speed up the training of an LSTM-based model on AI Platform, one should modify the scale-tier parameter to use a higher tier or a custom configuration that provides more computational resources, such as more CPUs, GPUs, or TPUs. This can reduce the training time by increasing the parallelism and throughput of the model training. However, one should also consider the trade-off between the training time and the cost, as higher tiers or custom configurations may incur higher charges2

The other options are not as effective or may have adverse effects on the model accuracy. Modifying the epochs parameter, which specifies the number of times the model sees the entire dataset, may reduce the training time, but also affect the model’s convergence and performance. Modifying the batch size parameter, which specifies the number of examples per batch, may affect the model’s stability and generalization ability, as well as the memory usage and the gradient update frequency. Modifying the learning rate parameter, which specifies the step size of the gradient descent optimization, may affect the model’s convergence and performance, as well as the risk of overshooting or getting stuck in local minima3

References: 1: Using predefined machine types 2: Distributed training 3: Hyperparameter tuning overview

• Option A is incorrect because distributing the dataset with tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset is not the most effective way to decrease the training time. This method allows you to distribute your dataset across multiple devices or machines, by creating a tf.data.Dataset instance that can be iterated over in parallel1. However, this option may not improve the training time significantly, as it does not change the amount of data or computation that each device or machine has to process. Moreover, this option may introduce additional overhead or complexity, as it requires you to handle the data sharding, replication, and synchronization across the devices or machines1.
• Option B is incorrect because creating a custom training loop is not the easiest way to decrease the training time. A custom training loop is a way to implement your own logic for training your model, by using low-level TensorFlow APIs, such as tf.GradientTape, tf.Variable, or tf.function2. A custom training loop may give you more flexibility and control over the training process, but it also requires more effort and expertise, as you have to write and debug the code for each step of the training loop, such as computing the gradients, applying the optimizer, or updating the metrics2. Moreover, a custom training loop may not improve the training time significantly, as it does not change the amount of data or computation that each device or machine has to process.
• Option C is incorrect because using a TPU with tf.distribute.TPUStrategy is not a valid way to decrease the training time. A TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) is a custom hardware accelerator designed for high-performance ML workloads3. A tf.distribute.TPUStrategy is a distribution strategy that allows you to distribute your training across multiple TPUs, by creating a tf.distribute.TPUStrategy instance that can be used with high-level TensorFlow APIs, such as Keras4. However, this option is not feasible, as Vertex AI Training does not support TPUs as accelerators for custom training jobs5. Moreover, this option may require significant code changes, as TPUs have different requirements and limitations than GPUs.
• Option D is correct because increasing the batch size is the best way to decrease the training time. The batch size is a hyperparameter that determines how many samples of data are processed in each iteration of the training loop. Increasing the batch size may reduce the training time, as it reduces the number of iterations needed to train the model, and it allows each device or machine to process more data in parallel. Increasing the batch size is also easy to implement, as it only requires changing a single hyperparameter. However, increasing the batch size may also affect the convergence and the accuracy of the model, so it is important to find the optimal batch size that balances the trade-off between the training time and the model performance.

References:

• tf.distribute.Strategy.experimental_distribute_dataset
• Custom training loop
• TPU overview
• tf.distribute.TPUStrategy
• Vertex AI Training accelerators
• [TPU programming model]
• [Batch size and learning rate]
• [Keras overview]
• [tf.distribute.MirroredStrategy]
• [Vertex AI Training overview]
• [TensorFlow overview]

 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 Explainable AI is a set of tools and frameworks to help you understand and interpret predictions made by your machine learning models, natively integrated with a number of Google’s products and services1. With Vertex Explainable AI, you can generate feature-based explanations that show how much each input feature contributed to the model’s prediction2. This can help you debug and improve your model performance, and build confidence in your model’s behavior. Feature-based explanations are supported for custom image classification models deployed on Vertex AI Prediction3. References:

• Explainable AI | Google Cloud
• Introduction to Vertex Explainable AI | Vertex AI | Google Cloud
• Supported model types for feature-based explanations | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

 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

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

 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

 The performance of an image classification model can be measured by various metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and mean average precision (mAP). These metrics can be calculated based on the confusion matrix, which compares the predicted labels and the true labels of the images1

One of the best ways to monitor the performance of multiple versions of an image classification model on AI Platform is to compare the mean average precision across the models using the Continuous Evaluation feature. Mean average precision is a metric that summarizes the precision and recall of a model across different confidence thresholds and classes. Mean average precision is especially useful for multi-class and multi-label image classification problems, where the model has to assign one or more labels to each image from a set of possible labels. Mean average precision can range from 0 to 1, where a higher value indicates a better performance2

Continuous Evaluation is a feature of AI Platform that allows you to automatically evaluate the performance of your deployed models using online prediction requests and responses. Continuous Evaluation can help you monitor the quality and consistency of your models over time, and detect any issues or anomalies that may affect the model performance. Continuous Evaluation can also provide various evaluation metrics and visualizations, such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, ROC curve, and confusion matrix, for different types of models, such as classification, regression, and object detection3

To compare the mean average precision across the models using the Continuous Evaluation feature, you need to do the following steps:

• Enable the online prediction logging for each model version that you want to evaluate. This will allow AI Platform to collect the prediction requests and responses from your models and store them in BigQuery4
• Create an evaluation job for each model version that you want to evaluate. This will allow AI Platform to compare the predicted labels and the true labels of the images, and calculate the evaluation metrics, such as mean average precision. You need to specify the BigQuery table that contains the prediction logs, the data schema, the label column, and the evaluation interval.
• View the evaluation results for each model version on the AI Platform Models page in the Google Cloud console. You can see the mean average precision and other metrics for each model version over time, and compare them using charts and tables. You can also filter the results by different classes and confidence thresholds.

The other options are not as effective or feasible. Comparing the loss performance for each model on a held-out dataset or on the validation data is not a good idea, as the loss function may not reflect the actual performance of the model on the online prediction data, and may vary depending on the choice of the loss function and the optimization algorithm. Comparing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for each model using the What-If Tool is not possible, as the What-If Tool does not support image data or multi-class classification problems.

References: 1: Confusion matrix 2: Mean average precision 3: Continuous Evaluation overview 4: Configure online prediction logging : [Create an evaluation job] : [View evaluation results] : [What-If Tool overview]

The best way to operationalize your training process is to use Vertex AI Pipelines, which allows you to create and run scalable, portable, and reproducible workflows for your ML models. Vertex AI Pipelines also integrates with Vertex AI Metadata, which tracks the provenance, lineage, and artifacts of your ML models. By using a Vertex AI CustomTrainingJobOp component, you can train your model using the same code as in your Jupyter notebook. By using a ModelUploadOp component, you can upload your trained model to Vertex AI Model Registry, which manages the versions and endpoints of your models. By using Cloud Scheduler and Cloud Functions, you can trigger your Vertex AI pipeline to run weekly, according to your plan. References:

• Vertex AI Pipelines documentation
• Vertex AI Metadata documentation
• Vertex AI CustomTrainingJobOp documentation
• ModelUploadOp documentation
• Cloud Scheduler documentation
• [Cloud Functions documentation]

 TensorFlow Data Validation (TFDV) is a library that helps you understand, validate, and monitor your data for machine learning. It can automatically detect and report schema anomalies, such as missing features, new features, or different data types, in your data. It can also generate descriptive statistics and data visualizations to help you explore and debug your data. TFDV can be integrated with your model training pipeline to ensure data quality and consistency throughout the machine learning lifecycle. References:

• TensorFlow Data Validation
• Data Validation | TensorFlow
• Data Validation | Machine Learning Crash Course | Google Developers

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “configure and optimize model monitoring jobs”. Vertex AI Model Monitoring documentation states that “model monitoring helps you detect when your model’s performance degrades over time due to changes in the data that your model receives or returns” and that "you can configure model monitoring to send notifications to Pub/Sub when it detects anomalies or drift in your model’s predictions"2. Therefore, enabling model monitoring on the Vertex AI endpoint and configuring Pub/Sub to call the Cloud Function when feature drift is detected would help you keep the model up-to-date and minimize retraining costs. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Vertex AI Model Monitoring
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

 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]

 Sentiment analysis is the process of identifying and extracting the emotions, opinions, and attitudes expressed in a text or speech. Sentiment analysis can help businesses understand their customers’ feedback, satisfaction, and preferences. There are different approaches to building a sentiment analysis tool, depending on the input data and the output format. Some of the common approaches are:

• Extracting sentiment directly from the voice recordings: This approach involves using acoustic features, such as pitch, intensity, and prosody, to infer the sentiment of the speaker. This approach can capture the nuances and subtleties of the vocal expression, but it also requires a large and diverse dataset of labeled voice recordings, which may not be easily available or accessible. Moreover, this approach may not account for the semantic and contextual information of the speech, which can also affect the sentiment.
• Converting the speech to text and building a model based on the words: This approach involves using automatic speech recognition (ASR) to transcribe the voice recordings into text, and then using lexical features, such as word frequency, polarity, and valence, to infer the sentiment of the text. This approach can leverage the existing text-based sentiment analysis models and tools, but it also introduces some challenges, such as the accuracy and reliability of the ASR system, the ambiguity and variability of the natural language, and the loss of the acoustic information of the speech.
• Converting the speech to text and extracting sentiments based on the sentences: This approach involves using ASR to transcribe the voice recordings into text, and then using syntactic and semantic features, such as sentence structure, word order, and meaning, to infer the sentiment of the text. This approach can capture the higher-level and complex aspects of the natural language, such as negation, sarcasm, and irony, which can affect the sentiment. However, this approach also requires more sophisticated and advanced natural language processing techniques, such as parsing, dependency analysis, and semantic role labeling, which may not be readily available or easy to implement.
• Converting the speech to text and extracting sentiment using syntactical analysis: This approach involves using ASR to transcribe the voice recordings into text, and then using syntactical analysis, such as part-of-speech tagging, phrase chunking, and constituency parsing, to infer the sentiment of the text. This approach can identify the grammatical and structural elements of the natural language, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and clauses, which can indicate the sentiment. However, this approach may not account for the pragmatic and contextual information of the speech, such as the speaker’s intention, tone, and situation, which can also influence the sentiment.

For the use case of building a sentiment analysis tool that predicts customer sentiment from recorded phone conversations, the best approach is to convert the speech to text and extract sentiments based on the sentences. This approach can balance the trade-offs between the accuracy, complexity, and feasibility of the sentiment analysis tool, while ensuring that the gender, age, and cultural differences of the customers who called the contact center do not impact any stage of the model development pipeline and results. This approach can also handle different types and levels of sentiment, such as polarity (positive, negative, or neutral), intensity (strong or weak), and emotion (anger, joy, sadness, etc.). Therefore, converting the speech to text and extracting sentiments based on the sentences is the best approach for this use case.

• Cost-effectiveness: User-managed notebooks in Vertex AI Workbench allow you to leverage pre-configured virtual machines with reasonable resource allocation, keeping costs lower compared to options involving managed notebooks or Dataproc clusters.
• Development flexibility: User-managed notebooks offer full control over the environment, allowing you to install additional libraries or dependencies needed for your specific EDA, preprocessing, and model training tasks. This flexibility is crucial while experimenting with different algorithms.
• BigQuery integration: The %%bigquery magic commands provide seamless integration with BigQuery within the Jupyter Notebook environment. This enables efficient querying and exploration of customer transaction data stored in BigQuery directly from the notebook, streamlining the workflow.

Other options and why they are not the best fit:

• B. Managed notebook: While managed notebooks offer an easier setup, they might have limited customization options, potentially hindering your ability to install specific libraries or tools.
• C. Dataproc Hub: Dataproc Hub focuses on running large-scale distributed workloads, and it might be overkill for your scenario involving exploratory analysis and experimentation with different algorithms. Additionally, it could incur higher costs compared to a user-managed notebook.
• D. Dataproc cluster with spark-bigquery-connector: Similar to option C, using a Dataproc cluster with the spark-bigquery-connector would be more complex and potentially more expensive than using %%bigquery magic commands within a user-managed notebook for accessing BigQuery data.

References:

• https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/workbench/instances/bigquery
• https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-notebooks

The best option for reducing pipeline execution time and cost, while also minimizing pipeline changes, is to enable caching for the pipeline job, and disable caching for the model training step. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI Pipelines to reuse the output of the data preprocessing step, and avoid unnecessary recomputation. 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. Caching is a feature of Vertex AI Pipelines that can store and reuse the output of a pipeline step, and skip the execution of the step if the input parameters and the code have not changed. Caching can help you reduce the pipeline execution time and cost, as you do not need to re-run the same step with the same input and code. Caching can also help you minimize the pipeline changes, as you do not need to add or remove any pipeline steps or parameters. By enabling caching for the pipeline job, and disabling caching for the model training step, you can create a Vertex AI pipeline that includes two steps. The first step preprocesses 10 TB data, completes in about 1 hour, and saves the result in a Cloud Storage bucket. The second step uses the processed data to train a model. You can update the model’s code to allow you to test different algorithms, and run the pipeline job with caching enabled. The pipeline job will reuse the output of the data preprocessing step from the cache, and skip the execution of the step. The pipeline job will run the model training step with the updated code, and disable the caching for the step. This way, you can reduce the pipeline execution time and cost, while also minimizing pipeline changes1.

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

• Option A: Adding a pipeline parameter and an additional pipeline step, depending on the parameter value, the pipeline step conducts or skips data preprocessing and starts model training, would require more skills and steps than enabling caching for the pipeline job, and disabling caching for the model training step. A pipeline parameter is a variable that can be used to control the input or output of a pipeline step. A pipeline parameter can help you customize the pipeline logic and behavior, and experiment with different values. An additional pipeline step is a new instance of a pipeline component that can perform a part of the pipeline workflow, such as data preprocessing or model training. An additional pipeline step can help you extend the pipeline functionality and complexity, and handle different scenarios. However, adding a pipeline parameter and an additional pipeline step, depending on the parameter value, the pipeline step conducts or skips data preprocessing and starts model training, would require more skills and steps than enabling caching for the pipeline job, and disabling caching for the model training step. You would need to write code, define the pipeline parameter, create the additional pipeline step, implement the conditional logic, and compile and run the pipeline. Moreover, this option would not reuse the output of the data preprocessing step from the cache, but rather from the Cloud Storage bucket, which can increase the data transfer and access costs1.
• Option B: Creating another pipeline without the preprocessing step, and hardcoding the preprocessed Cloud Storage file location for model training, would require more skills and steps than enabling caching for the pipeline job, and disabling caching for the model training step. A pipeline without the preprocessing step is a pipeline that only includes the model training step, and uses the preprocessed data from the Cloud Storage bucket as the input. A pipeline without the preprocessing step can help you avoid running the data preprocessing step every time, and reduce the pipeline execution time and cost. However, creating another pipeline without the preprocessing step, and hardcoding the preprocessed Cloud Storage file location for model training, would require more skills and steps than enabling caching for the pipeline job, and disabling caching for the model training step. You would need to write code, create a new pipeline, remove the preprocessing step, hardcode the Cloud Storage file location, and compile and run the pipeline. Moreover, this option would not reuse the output of the data preprocessing step from the cache, but rather from the Cloud Storage bucket, which can increase the data transfer and access costs. Furthermore, this option would create another pipeline, which can increase the maintenance and management costs1.
• Option C: Configuring a machine with more CPU and RAM from the compute-optimized machine family for the data preprocessing step, would not reduce the pipeline execution time and cost, while also minimizing pipeline changes, but rather increase the pipeline execution cost and complexity. A machine with more CPU and RAM from the compute-optimized machine family is a virtual machine that has a high ratio of CPU cores to memory, and can provide high performance and scalability for compute-intensive workloads. A machine with more CPU and RAM from the compute-optimized machine family can help you optimize the data preprocessing step, and reduce the pipeline execution time. However, configuring a machine with more CPU and RAM from the compute-optimized machine family for the data preprocessing step, would not reduce the pipeline execution time and cost, while also minimizing pipeline changes, but rather increase the pipeline execution cost and complexity. You would need to write code, configure the machine type parameters for the data preprocessing step, and compile and run the pipeline. Moreover, this option would increase the pipeline execution cost, as machines with more CPU and RAM from the compute-optimized machine family are more expensive than machines with less CPU and RAM from other machine families. Furthermore, this option would not reuse the output of the data preprocessing step from the cache, but rather re-run the data preprocessing step every time, which can increase the pipeline execution time and cost1.

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
• Vertex AI Pipelines
• Caching
• Pipeline parameters
• Machine types

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

• Option A is incorrect because creating a one-hot encoding of words, and feeding the encodings into your model is not an efficient way to preprocess the words individually for a natural language model. One-hot encoding is a method of representing categorical variables as binary vectors, where each element corresponds to a category and only one element is 1 and the rest are 01. However, this method is not suitable for high-dimensional and sparse data, such as words in a large vocabulary, because it requires a lot of memory and computation, and does not capture the semantic similarity or relationship between words2.
• Option B is correct because identifying word embeddings from a pre-trained model, and using the embeddings in your model is a good way to preprocess the words individually for a natural language model. Word embeddings are low-dimensional and dense vectors that represent the meaning and usage of words in a continuous space3. Word embeddings can be learned from a large corpus of text using neural networks, such as word2vec, GloVe, or BERT4. Using pre-trained word embeddings can save time and resources, and improve the performance of the natural language model, especially when the training data is limited or noisy5.
• Option C is incorrect because sorting the words by frequency of occurrence, and using the frequencies as the encodings in your model is not a meaningful way to preprocess the words individually for a natural language model. This method implies that the frequency of a word is a good indicator of its importance or relevance, which may not be true. For example, the word “the” is very frequent but not very informative, while the word “unicorn” is rare but more distinctive. Moreover, this method does not capture the semantic similarity or relationship between words, and may introduce noise or bias into the model.
• Option D is incorrect because assigning a numerical value to each word from 1 to 100,000 and feeding the values as inputs in your model is not a valid way to preprocess the words individually for a natural language model. This method implies an ordinal relationship between the words, which may not be true. For example, assigning the values 1, 2, and 3 to the words “apple”, “banana”, and “orange” does not make sense, as there is no inherent order among these fruits. Moreover, this method does not capture the semantic similarity or relationship between words, and may confuse the model with irrelevant or misleading information.

References:

• One-hot encoding
• Word embeddings
• Word embedding
• Pre-trained word embeddings
• Using pre-trained word embeddings in a Keras model
• [Term frequency]
• [Term frequency-inverse document frequency]
• [Ordinal variable]
• [Encoding categorical features]

Vertex AI Model Monitoring is a service that allows you to monitor the performance and quality of your ML models in production. You can use Vertex AI Model Monitoring to detect changes in the input data distribution, the prediction output distribution, or the model accuracy over time. Training-serving skew detection is a feature of Vertex AI Model Monitoring that compares the statistics of the data used for training the model and the data used for serving the model. If there is a significant difference between the two data distributions, it indicates that the model might be outdated or inaccurate. By enabling training-serving skew detection for your model, you can detect model performance changes in production and trigger retraining or redeployment of your model as needed. This way, you can ensure that your model is always up-to-date and accurate, without moving your data to the cloud. References:

• Vertex AI Model Monitoring documentation
• Training-serving skew detection documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

• 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

• Option A is incorrect because reinforcement learning is not a suitable approach to build a model that identifies defects in products based on images of the product taken at the end of the assembly line. Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning that learns from its own actions and rewards, rather than from labeled data or explicit feedback1. Reinforcement learning is more suitable for problems that involve sequential decision making, such as games, robotics, or control systems1. However, defect detection is a problem that involves image classification or segmentation, which requires supervised learning, not reinforcement learning.
• Option B is incorrect because a recommender system is not a relevant approach to build a model that identifies defects in products based on images of the product taken at the end of the assembly line. A recommender system is a system that suggests items or actions to users based on their preferences, behavior, or context2. A recommender system is more suitable for problems that involve personalization, such as e-commerce, entertainment, or social media2. However, defect detection is a problem that involves image classification or segmentation, which requires supervised learning, not recommender system.
• Option C is incorrect because recurrent neural networks (RNN) are not the most efficient approach to build a model that identifies defects in products based on images of the product taken at the end of the assembly line. RNNs are a type of neural networks that can process sequential data, such as text, speech, or video, by maintaining a hidden state that captures the temporal dependencies3. RNNs are more suitable for problems that involve natural language processing, speech recognition, or video analysis3. However, defect detection is a problem that involves image classification or segmentation, which does not require temporal dependencies, but rather spatial dependencies. Moreover, RNNs are computationally expensive and prone to vanishing or exploding gradients4.
• Option D is correct because convolutional neural networks (CNN) are the best approach to build a model that identifies defects in products based on images of the product taken at the end of the assembly line. CNNs are a type of neural networks that can process image data, by applying convolutional filters that extract local features and reduce the dimensionality of the data5. CNNs are more suitable for problems that involve image classification, object detection, or segmentation5. CNNs can preprocess the images with lower computation to quickly extract features of defects in products, by using techniques such as pooling, dropout, or batch normalization6.

References:

• Reinforcement learning
• Recommender system
• Recurrent neural network
• Vanishing and exploding gradients
• Convolutional neural network
• CNN techniques
• [Defect detection]
• [Image classification]
• [Image segmentation]

The best option to ensure that the features with the largest magnitude don’t overfit the model is to normalize the data by scaling it to have values between 0 and 1. This is also known as min-max scaling or feature scaling, and it can reduce the variance and skewness of the data, as well as improve the numerical stability and convergence of the model. Normalizing the data can also make the model less sensitive to the scale of the features, and more focused on the relative importance of each feature. Normalizing the data can be done using various methods, such as dividing each value by the maximum value, subtracting the minimum value and dividing by the range, or using the sklearn.preprocessing.MinMaxScaler function in Python.

The other options are not optimal for the following reasons:

• A. Standardizing the data by transforming it with a logarithmic function is not a good option, as it can distort the distribution and relationship of the data, and introduce bias and errors. Moreover, the logarithmic function is not defined for negative or zero values, which can limit its applicability and cause problems for the model.
• B. Applying a principal component analysis (PCA) to minimize the effect of any particular feature is not a good option, as it can reduce the interpretability and explainability of the data and the model. PCA is a dimensionality reduction technique that transforms the data into a new set of orthogonal features that capture the most variance in the data. However, these new features are not directly related to the original features, and can lose some information and meaning in the process. Moreover, PCA can be computationally expensive and complex, and may not be necessary for the problem at hand.
• C. Using a binning strategy to replace the magnitude of each feature with the appropriate bin number is not a good option, as it can lose the granularity and precision of the data, and introduce noise and outliers. Binning is a discretization technique that groups the continuous values of a feature into a finite number of bins or categories. However, this can reduce the variability and diversity of the data, and create artificial boundaries and gaps that may not reflect the true nature of the data. Moreover, binning can be arbitrary and subjective, and depend on the choice of the bin size and number.

References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• Feature Scaling for Machine Learning: Understanding the Difference Between Normalization vs. Standardization
• sklearn.preprocessing.MinMaxScaler documentation
• Principal Component Analysis Explained Visually
• Binning Data in Python

 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]

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

 AutoML Vision is a Google Cloud service that allows you to train custom ML models for image classification, object detection, and segmentation without writing any code. You can use AutoML Vision to upload your training data, label it, and train a model using a graphical user interface. You can also evaluate the model’s performance and export it for deployment. One of the export options is Core ML, which is a framework that lets you integrate ML models into iOS applications. Core ML optimizes the model for on-device performance, power efficiency, and minimal memory footprint. By using AutoML Vision and Core ML, you can minimize code development and have a model that is optimized for inference on mobile phones. References:

• AutoML Vision documentation
• Core ML documentation

 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

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 ingest the Avro files from the Cloud Storage bucket and perform analytics on the structured data. Avro is a binary file format that can store complex data types and schemas. You can use the bq load command or the BigQuery API to load the Avro files into a BigQuery table. You can then use SQL queries to analyze the data and generate insights. Dataflow is a service that allows you to create and run scalable and portable data processing pipelines on Google Cloud. You can use Dataflow to create the features for your ML models, such as transforming, aggregating, and encoding the data. You can use the Apache Beam SDK to write your Dataflow pipeline code in Python or Java. You can also use the built-in transforms or custom transforms to apply the feature engineering logic to your data. Vertex AI Feature Store is a service that allows you to store and manage your ML features on Google Cloud. You can use Vertex AI Feature Store to host the features that your ML models use for online prediction. Online prediction is a type of prediction that provides low-latency responses to individual or small batches of input data. You can use the Vertex AI Feature Store API to write the features from your Dataflow pipeline to a feature store entity type. You can then use the Vertex AI Feature Store online serving API to read the features from the feature store and pass them to your ML models for online prediction. By using BigQuery, Dataflow, and Vertex AI Feature Store, you can configure a pipeline that performs analytics, creates features, and hosts the features that your ML models use for online prediction. References:

• BigQuery documentation
• Dataflow documentation
• Vertex AI Feature Store documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

The best option for choosing a model that prioritizes detection while ensuring that more than 50% of the maintenance jobs triggered by the model address an imminent machine failure is to choose the model with the highest recall where precision is greater than 0.5. This option has the following advantages:

• It maximizes the recall, which is the proportion of actual failures that are correctly predicted by the model. Recall is also known as sensitivity or true positive rate (TPR), and it is calculated as:

mathrmRecall=fracmathrmTPmathrmTP+mathrmFN

where TP is the number of true positives (actual failures that are predicted as failures) and FN is the number of false negatives (actual failures that are predicted as non-failures). By maximizing the recall, the model can reduce the number of false negatives, which are the most costly and undesirable outcomes for the predictive maintenance use case, as they represent missed failures that can lead to machine breakdown and downtime.

• It constrains the precision, which is the proportion of predicted failures that are actual failures. Precision is also known as positive predictive value (PPV), and it is calculated as:

mathrmPrecision=fracmathrmTPmathrmTP+mathrmFP

where FP is the number of false positives (actual non-failures that are predicted as failures). By constraining the precision to be greater than 0.5, the model can ensure that more than 50% of the maintenance jobs triggered by the model address an imminent machine failure, which can avoid unnecessary or wasteful maintenance costs.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

• Option A: Choosing the model with the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC ROC) and precision greater than 0.5 may not prioritize detection, as the AUC ROC does not directly measure the recall. The AUC ROC is a summary metric that evaluates the overall performance of a binary classifier across all possible thresholds. The ROC curve plots the TPR (recall) against the false positive rate (FPR), which is the proportion of actual non-failures that are incorrectly predicted by the model. The AUC ROC is the area under the ROC curve, and it ranges from 0 to 1, where 1 represents a perfect classifier. However, choosing the model with the highest AUC ROC may not maximize the recall, as the AUC ROC is influenced by both the TPR and the FPR, and it does not account for the precision or the specificity (the proportion of actual non-failures that are correctly predicted by the model).
• Option B: Choosing the model with the lowest root mean squared error (RMSE) and recall greater than 0.5 may not prioritize detection, as the RMSE is not a suitable metric for binary classification. The RMSE is a regression metric that measures the average magnitude of the error between the predicted and the actual values. The RMSE is calculated as:

mathrmRMSE=sqrtfrac1nsumi=1n​(yi​−hatyi​)2

where yi​ is the actual value, hatyi​ is the predicted value, and n is the number of observations. However, choosing the model with the lowest RMSE may not optimize the detection of failures, as the RMSE is sensitive to outliers and does not account for the class imbalance or the cost of misclassification.

• Option D: Choosing the model with the highest precision where recall is greater than 0.5 may not prioritize detection, as the precision may not be the most important metric for the predictive maintenance use case. The precision measures the accuracy of the positive predictions, but it does not reflect the sensitivity or the coverage of the model. By choosing the model with the highest precision, the model may sacrifice the recall, which is the proportion of actual failures that are correctly predicted by the model. This may increase the number of false negatives, which are the most costly and undesirable outcomes for the predictive maintenance use case, as they represent missed failures that can lead to machine breakdown and downtime.

References:

• Evaluation Metrics (Classifiers) - Stanford University
• Evaluation of binary classifiers - Wikipedia
• Predictive Maintenance: The greatest benefits and smart use cases

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 automating the model retraining workflow is to use GitHub Actions and Cloud Build. GitHub Actions is a service that can create and run workflows for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) on GitHub. GitHub Actions can run tests, build and deploy code, and trigger other actions based on events such as code changes, pull requests, or manual triggers. Cloud Build is a service that can create and run scalable and reliable pipelines to build, test, and deploy software on Google Cloud. Cloud Build can build custom Docker images, push the images to Artifact Registry, and launch the pipeline in Vertex AI Pipelines. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that can orchestrate machine learning (ML) workflows using Vertex AI. Vertex AI Pipelines can run preprocessing and training steps on custom Docker images, and evaluate, deploy, and monitor the ML model. By using GitHub Actions and Cloud Build, users can leverage the power and flexibility of Google Cloud to automate the model retraining workflow, while minimizing the steps required to build the workflow.

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

• Option A: Triggering a Cloud Build workflow to run tests, build custom Docker images, push the images to Artifact Registry, and launch the pipeline in Vertex AI Pipelines would require more configuration and maintenance than using GitHub Actions and Cloud Build. Cloud Build is a service that can create and run pipelines to build, test, and deploy software on Google Cloud, but it is not designed to integrate with GitHub or other source code repositories. To trigger a Cloud Build workflow from GitHub, users would need to set up a webhook, a Cloud Pub/Sub topic, and a Cloud Function1. Moreover, Cloud Build does not support manual triggers, which limits the flexibility of the workflow2.
• Option B: Triggering GitHub Actions to run the tests, launching a job on Cloud Run to build custom Docker images, pushing the images to Artifact Registry, and launching the pipeline in Vertex AI Pipelines would require more steps and resources than using GitHub Actions and Cloud Build. Cloud Run is a service that can run stateless containers on a fully managed environment or on Anthos. Cloud Run can build custom Docker images, but it is not optimized for this task. Users would need to write a Dockerfile, a cloudbuild.yaml file, and a Cloud Run service configuration file, and use the gcloud command-line tool to build and deploy the image3. Moreover, Cloud Run is designed for serving HTTP requests, not for running ML pipelines, which can have different performance and scalability requirements.
• Option C: Triggering GitHub Actions to run the tests, building custom Docker images, pushing the images to Artifact Registry, and launching the pipeline in Vertex AI Pipelines would require more skills and tools than using GitHub Actions and Cloud Build. GitHub Actions can run tests and build code, but it is not specialized for building Docker images. Users would need to install and configure Docker on the GitHub Actions runner, write a Dockerfile, and use the docker command-line tool to build and push the image. Moreover, GitHub Actions has limitations on the disk space, memory, and CPU of the runner, which can affect the speed and reliability of the image building process.

References:

• Building CI/CD for Vertex AI pipelines: The first solution
• Cloud Build
• GitHub Actions
• Vertex AI Pipelines
• Triggering builds from GitHub
• Triggering builds manually
• Building containers
• Cloud Run
• [Building and testing Docker images with GitHub Actions]
• [Usage limits, billing, and administration]

A random forest is an ensemble learning method that consists of many decision trees. It can be used for both regression and classification tasks. A random forest classification model can predict the probability of churn for each customer by assigning them to different classes, such as high-risk, medium-risk, or low-risk. A random forest model can also generate feature importances, which measure how much each feature contributes to the prediction. Feature importances can help interpret the model and understand what factors influence customer churn. Vertex AI Workbench is an integrated development environment (IDE) that allows you to create and run Jupyter notebooks on Google Cloud. You can use Vertex AI Workbench to build a random forest classification model in Python, using libraries such as scikit-learn or TensorFlow. You can also configure the model to generate feature importances after the model is trained, and visualize them using plots or tables. This solution can help you build an interpretable model for customer churn prediction, and use the results to design marketing campaigns that target at-risk customers. References:

• Random Forests | scikit-learn
• Vertex AI Workbench | Google Cloud
• Interpreting Random Forests | Towards Data Science

Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and managing machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. It provides a managed service for training custom models with various frameworks, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, and XGBoost. To train your PyTorch model with Vertex AI, you need to package your code with Setuptools, which is a Python tool for creating and distributing packages. You also need to use a pre-built container, which is a Docker image that contains the dependencies and libraries for your framework. You can choose from a list of pre-built containers provided by Google, or create your own custom container. By using a pre-built container, you can avoid the hassle of installing and configuring the environment for your model. You can also specify a custom tier for your training job, which allows you to select the number and type of GPUs you want to use. You can choose from various GPU options, such as V100, P100, K80, and T4. By using 4 V100 GPUs, you can leverage the high performance and memory capacity of these accelerators to train your model faster and cheaper than using CPUs. This solution requires minimal changes to your code and can scale your training workload efficiently. References:

• Vertex AI | Google Cloud
• Custom training with pre-built containers | Vertex AI
• [Using GPUs | Vertex AI]

Oscillation in the loss during batch training of a neural network means that the model is overshooting the optimal point of the loss function and bouncing back and forth. This can prevent the model from converging to the minimum loss value. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is that the learning rate hyperparameter, which controls the size of the steps that the model takes along the gradient, is too high. Therefore, decreasing the learning rate hyperparameter can help the model take smaller and more precise steps and avoid oscillation. This is a common technique to improve the stability and performance of neural network training12.

References:

• Interpreting Loss Curves
• Is learning rate the only reason for training loss oscillation after few epochs?