Machine Learning

Right! Where were we? Yes, last time we put together a skeleton for the CoreML Boston Model application that will take two inputs (crime rate and number of rooms) and provide a prediction of the price of a Boston property (yes, based on somewhat all prices…). We are making use of three three labels, one picker and one button.

Let us start creating variables to hold the potential values for the input variables. We will do this in the ViewController by selecting this file from the left-hand side menu:

Inside the ViewController class definition enter the following variable assignments:

let crimeData = Array(stride(from: 0.1, through: 0.3, by: 0.01))
let roomData = Array(4...9)

These values are informed by the data exploration we carried out in an earlier post. We are going to use the arrays defined above to populate the values that will be shown in our picker. For this we need to define a data source for the picker and make sure that there are two components to choose values from.

Before we do any of that we need to connect the view from our storyboard to the code, in particular we need to create outlets for the picker and for the button. Select the Main.storyboard from the menu in the left-hand side. With the Main.storyboard in view, in the top right-hand corner of Xcode you will see a button with an icon that has two intersecting circles, click on that icon. you will now see the storyboard side-by-side with the code. While pressing the Control key, select the picker by clicking on it; without letting go drag into the code window (you will see an arrow appear as you drag):

You will se a dialogue window where you can now enter a name for the element in your Storyboard. In this case I am calling my picker inputPicker, as shown in the figure on the left. After pressing the “connect” button a new line of code appears and you will see a small circle on top of the code line number indicating that a connection with the Storyboard has been made. Do the same for the button and call it predictButton.

In order to make our life a little bit easier, we are going to bundle together the input values. At the bottom of the ViewController code write the following:

enum inputPredictor: Int {
    case crime = 0
    case rooms
}

We have define an object called inputPredictor that will hold the values of for crime and rooms. In turn we will use this object to populate the picker as follows: In the same ViewController file, after the class definition that is provided in the project by  default we are going to write an extension for the data source. Write the following code:

extension ViewController: UIPickerViewDataSource {

    func numberOfComponents(in pickerView: UIPickerView) -> Int {
        return 2
    }

    func pickerView(_ pickerView: UIPickerView,
                    numberOfRowsInComponent component: Int) -> Int {
        guard let inputVals = inputPredictor(rawValue: component) else {
            fatalError("No predictor for component")
        }

        switch inputVals {
        case .crime:
            return crimeData.count
        case .rooms:
            return roomData.count
        }
    }
}

With the function numberOfComponents we are indicating that we want to have 2 components in this view. Notice that inside the pickerView function we are creating a constant inputVals defined by the values from inputPredictor.  So far we have indicated where the values for the picker come from, but we have not delegated the actions that can be taken with those values, namely displaying them and picking them (after all, this element is a picker!) so that we can use the values elsewhere. If you were to execute this app, you will see an empty picker…

OK, so what we need to do is create the UIPickerViewDelegate, and we do this by entering the following code right under the previous snippet:

extension ViewController: UIPickerViewDelegate {
    func pickerView(_ pickerView: UIPickerView, titleForRow row: Int,
                    forComponent component: Int) -> String? {
        guard let inputVals = inputPredictor(rawValue: component) else {
            fatalError("No predictor for component")
        }

        switch inputVals {
        case .crime:
            return String(crimeData[row])
        case .rooms:
            return String(roomData[row])
        }
    }

    func pickerView(_ pickerView: UIPickerView, didSelectRow row: Int,
                    inComponent component: Int) {
        guard let inputVals = inputPredictor(rawValue: component) else {
            fatalError("No predictor for component")
        }

        switch inputVals {
        case .crime:
            print(String(crimeData[row]))
        case .rooms:
            print(String(roomData[row]))
        }


    }
}

In the first function we are defining what values are supposed to be shown for the titleForRow in the picker, and we do this for each of the two elements we have, i.e. crime and rooms. In the second function we are defining what happens when we didSelectRow, in other words select the value that is being shown by each of the two elements in the picker. Not too bad, right?

Well, if you were to run this application you will still see no change in the picker… Why is that? The answer is that we need to let the application know what needs to be show when the elements load. Go back to the top of the code (around line 20 or so) below the code lines that defined the outlets for the picker and the button. There write the following code:

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    // Picker data source and delegate
    inputPicker.dataSource = self
    inputPicker.delegate = self
}

OK, we can now run the application: On the top left-hand side of the Xcode window you will see a play button; clicking on it will launch the Simulator and you will be able to see your picker working. Go on, select a few values from each of the elements:

In the next post we will write code to activate the button to run a prediction using our CoreML model with the values selected from the picker and show the result to the user. Stay tuned!

You can look at the code (in development) in my github site here.