All posts tagged with 'machine learning'
Combining text with numerical and categorical features for classification
Classification with transformer models A common approach for classification tasks with text data is to fine-tune a pre-trained transformer model on domain-specific data. At FreeAgent we apply this approach to automatically categorise bank transactions, using raw inputs that are a mixture of text, numerical and categorical data types. The current approach is to concatenate the input features for each transaction into a single string before passing to the model. For… Continue reading
Using API Gateway, Lambda, SageMaker and DynamoDB to build a categorisation service in AWS
I’ve talked previously about the value of combining rules-based and machine learning approaches to categorisation. In short, rules-based approaches make it easy to do customer-level personalisation that complements a machine learning model trained to find patterns across customers. In this post I’ll talk about how we used AWS to build an expense categorisation service that combines machine learning with a rules-based approach. This service forms part of the Smart Capture… Continue reading
Combining machine learning with rules-based personalisation
One of the ways we use machine learning at FreeAgent is to help automate data entry. Keeping on top of your accounts can involve slightly tedious manual tasks like categorising bank transactions or managing your expenses. Machine learning can help here by automating aspects of these tasks so our users can nail their daily admin and focus on bigger things. Personalisation with rules In 2020 we launched our first operational… Continue reading
Training Hugging Face models in parallel with SageMaker
In this post I'll describe how we train our Hugging Face models in a fraction of the time with a data parallel approach. Continue reading
Fine-Tuning BERT for multiclass categorisation with Amazon SageMaker
This post describes our approach to fine-tuning a BERT model for multiclass categorisation with Hugging Face and Amazon SageMaker. Continue reading
Bank Transaction Entity Detection with AWS Comprehend
Introduction For the past year, FreeAgent has been running a machine learning model in production that categorises customer bank transactions. This model takes transaction descriptions and transaction amounts as inputs, and attempts to predict the corresponding accounting category. This summer, I joined the data science team with the more specific goal of increasing model generalisation, which would allow it to make predictions for a larger fraction of incoming transactions. One… Continue reading
Transaction Taxonomy: Spending the Summer Studying SVMs
A company faces some unavoidably arduous tasks when taking control of their finances. One such task, which currently takes up a lot of time for our users, is explaining bank transactions. This is the process of assigning an accounting category to transactions, which is important both for internal reports generated by FreeAgent and for external submissions, for example to HMRC. At the end of June FreeAgent launched a suite of… Continue reading
Deriving and verifying the uncertainty on conversion rate predictions
For the past few weeks I’ve been working on building a machine learning model that can estimate the probability that a customer will convert from the free trial to a paid subscriber. In practice, I combine the predictions from this model for cohorts of companies, which are defined by their acquisition channel and acquisition month, and so a method is required for calculating the conversion rate uncertainties for each cohort.… Continue reading
Being a Data Science Intern at FreeAgent: The first month
As the end of my second year at university was approaching I knew I needed to get some real-world experience to help me get a clearer vision of what career path I want to follow in the future. The best way of achieving this was getting a summer internship. After reading some blog posts of past Interns at FreeAgent (who knew I would be writing one myself a few months… Continue reading