Pass the Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Specialty MLS-C01 Questions and answers with CertsForce

 To meet the requirements with the least operational overhead, the company should use AWS Glue crawlers, AWS Glue workflows and jobs, and Amazon Fraud Detector. AWS Glue crawlers can scan the data in Amazon S3 and identify the schema, which is then stored in the AWS Glue Data Catalog. AWS Glue workflows and jobs can perform data transformations on the data in Amazon S3 using serverless Spark or Python scripts. Amazon Fraud Detector can train a model to detect fraud using the transformed data and the company’s historical fraud labels, and then generate fraud predictions using a simple API call.

Option A is incorrect because Amazon Athena is a serverless query service that can analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, but it does not perform data transformations or fraud detection.

Option C is incorrect because Amazon Redshift is a cloud data warehouse that can store and query data using SQL, but it requires provisioning and managing clusters, which adds operational overhead. Moreover, Amazon Redshift does not provide a built-in fraud detection capability.

Option E is incorrect because Amazon Redshift ML is a feature that allows users to create, train, and deploy machine learning models using SQL commands in Amazon Redshift. However, using Amazon Redshift ML would require loading the data from Amazon S3 to Amazon Redshift, which adds complexity and cost. Also, Amazon Redshift ML does not support fraud detection as a use case.

AWS Glue Crawlers

AWS Glue Workflows and Jobs

Amazon Fraud Detector

The combination of steps that the ML engineer should take to train the model are to create a .lst file that contains a list of image files and corresponding class labels, upload the .lst file to Amazon S3, and initiate transfer learning by training the model using the images of less common species. This approach will allow the ML engineer to leverage the existing ImageNetV2 CNN model and fine-tune it with the new data using Pipe mode in SageMaker.

A .lst file is a text file that contains a list of image files and corresponding class labels, separated by tabs. The .lst file format is required for using the SageMaker image classification algorithm with Pipe mode. Pipe mode is a feature of SageMaker that enables streaming data directly from Amazon S3 to the training instances, without downloading the data first. Pipe mode can reduce the startup time, improve the I/O throughput, and enable training on large datasets that exceed the disk size limit. To use Pipe mode, the ML engineer needs to upload the .lst file to Amazon S3 and specify the S3 path as the input data channel for the training job1.

Transfer learning is a technique that enables reusing a pre-trained model for a new task by fine-tuning the model parameters with new data. Transfer learning can save time and computational resources, as well as improve the performance of the model, especially when the new task is similar to the original task. The SageMaker image classification algorithm supports transfer learning by allowing the ML engineer to specify the number of output classes and the number of layers to be retrained. The ML engineer can use the existing ImageNetV2 CNN model, which is trained on 1,000 classes of common objects, and fine-tune it with the new data of less common animal species, which is a similar task2.

The other options are either less effective or not supported by the SageMaker image classification algorithm. Using a ResNet model and initiating full training mode would require training the model from scratch, which would take more time and resources than transfer learning. Using an Inception model is not possible, as the SageMaker image classification algorithm only supports ResNet and ImageNetV2 models. Using an augmented manifest file in JSON Lines format is not compatible with Pipe mode, as Pipe mode only supports .lst files for image classification1.

1: Using Pipe input mode for Amazon SageMaker algorithms | AWS Machine Learning Blog

2: Image Classification Algorithm - Amazon SageMaker

The solution D meets the requirements with the least operational overhead because it uses Amazon SageMaker Autopilot, which is a fully managed service that automates the end-to-end process of building, training, and deploying machine learning models. Amazon SageMaker Autopilot can handle data preprocessing, feature engineering, algorithm selection, hyperparameter tuning, and model deployment. The company only needs to create an IAM role for Amazon SageMaker with access to the S3 bucket, create a SageMaker AutoML job pointing to the bucket with the dataset, specify the price as the target attribute, and wait for the job to complete. Amazon SageMaker Autopilot will generate a list of candidate models with different configurations and performance metrics, and the company can deploy the best model for predictions1.

The other options are not suitable because:

Option A: Creating a service-linked role for Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) with access to the S3 bucket, creating an ECS cluster based on an AWS Deep Learning Containers image, writing the code to perform the feature engineering, training a logistic regression model for predicting the price, and performing the inferences will incur more operational overhead than using Amazon SageMaker Autopilot. The company will have to manage the ECS cluster, the container image, the code, the model, and the inference endpoint. Moreover, logistic regression may not be the best algorithm for predicting the price, as it is more suitable for binary classification tasks2.

Option B: Creating an Amazon SageMaker notebook with a new IAM role that is associated with the notebook, pulling the dataset from the S3 bucket, exploring different combinations of feature engineering transformations, regression algorithms, and hyperparameters, comparing all the results in the notebook, and deploying the most accurate configuration in an endpoint for predictions will incur more operational overhead than using Amazon SageMaker Autopilot. The company will have to write the code for the feature engineering, the model training, the model evaluation, and the model deployment. The company will also have to manually compare the results and select the best configuration3.

Option C: Creating an IAM role with access to Amazon S3, Amazon SageMaker, and AWS Lambda, creating a training job with the SageMaker built-in XGBoost model pointing to the bucket with the dataset, specifying the price as the target feature, loading the model artifact to a Lambda function for inference on prices of new houses will incur more operational overhead than using Amazon SageMaker Autopilot. The company will have to create and manage the Lambda function, the model artifact, and the inference endpoint. Moreover, XGBoost may not be the best algorithm for predicting the price, as it is more suitable for classification and ranking tasks4.

1: Amazon SageMaker Autopilot

2: Amazon Elastic Container Service

3: Amazon SageMaker Notebook Instances

4: Amazon SageMaker XGBoost Algorithm

CNN-QR is a proprietary machine learning algorithm for forecasting time series using causal convolutional neural networks (CNNs). CNN-QR works best with large datasets containing hundreds of time series. It accepts item metadata, and is the only Forecast algorithm that accepts related time series data without future values. In this case, the power company has historical power consumption data for the last 10 years, which is a large dataset with multiple time series. The data also includes related data such as weather, number of individuals on the property, and public holidays, which can be used as item metadata or related time series data. Therefore, CNN-QR is the most suitable algorithm for this scenario. References: Amazon Forecast Algorithms, Amazon Forecast CNN-QR

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the most operationally simple and fully managed service for real-time data ingestion and transformation. Firehose supports:

Direct ingestion from edge locations or public endpoints

Integration with AWS Lambda for transformation

Backup of raw source records

Error handling with separate S3 prefixes for failed transformations

“You can configure your delivery stream to use a Lambda function to transform incoming records, and to back up all or failed records to Amazon S3.”

This meets all requirements with minimal infrastructure management:

Real-time ingestion

Inline transformation

Raw data and failed transformation storage in S3

 Regularization and dropouts are techniques that can help reduce overfitting in deep learning models. Overfitting occurs when the model learns too much from the training data and fails to generalize well to new data. Regularization adds a penalty term to the loss function that penalizes the model for having large or complex weights. This prevents the model from memorizing the noise or irrelevant features in the training data. L1 and L2 are two types of regularization that differ in how they calculate the penalty term. L1 regularization uses the absolute value of the weights, while L2 regularization uses the square of the weights. Dropouts are another technique that randomly drops out some units or neurons from the network during training. This creates a thinner network that is less prone to overfitting. Dropouts also act as a form of ensemble learning, where multiple sub-models are combined to produce a better prediction. By applying regularization and dropouts to the training, the web-based company can improve the generalization and accuracy of its deep learning model on the test and validation data. References:

Regularization: A video that explains the concept and benefits of regularization in deep learning.

Dropout: A video that demonstrates how dropout works and why it helps reduce overfitting.

The solution C will meet the requirements because it uses Amazon SageMaker Spot Instances, which are unused EC2 instances that are available at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices. Amazon SageMaker Spot Instances can speed up training and lower costs by taking advantage of the spare EC2 capacity. The company does not need to make any code changes to use Spot Instances, as it can simply enable the managed spot training option in the SageMaker training job configuration. The company also does not need to implement model checkpoints, as it is using only one epoch for training, which means the model will not resume from a previous state1.

The other options are not suitable because:

Option A: Configuring the SageMaker training job to use Pipe mode instead of File mode will not speed up training or lower costs significantly. Pipe mode is a data ingestion mode that streams data directly from S3 to the training algorithm, without copying the data to the local storage of the training instance. Pipe mode can reduce the startup time of the training job and the disk space usage, but it does not affect the computation time or the instance price. Moreover, Pipe mode may require some code changes to handle the streaming data, depending on the training algorithm2.

Option B: Configuring the SageMaker training job to use FastFile mode instead of File mode will not speed up training or lower costs significantly. FastFile mode is a data ingestion mode that copies data from S3 to the local storage of the training instance in parallel with the training process. FastFile mode can reduce the startup time of the training job and the disk space usage, but it does not affect the computation time or the instance price. Moreover, FastFile mode is only available for distributed training jobs that use multiple instances, which is not the case for the company3.

Option D: Configuring the SageMaker training job to use Spot Instances and implementing model checkpoints will not meet the requirements without the need to make any code changes. Model checkpoints are a feature that allows the training job to save the model state periodically to S3, and resume from the latest checkpoint if the training job is interrupted. Model checkpoints can help to avoid losing the training progress and ensure the model convergence, but they require some code changes to implement the checkpointing logic and the resuming logic4.

1: Managed Spot Training - Amazon SageMaker

2: Pipe Mode - Amazon SageMaker

3: FastFile Mode - Amazon SageMaker

4: Checkpoints - Amazon SageMaker

 The solution that will meet the requirements with the least development time is to use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to stream the reservation data directly to Amazon S3, detect high-demand outliers by using Amazon QuickSight ML Insights, and visualize the data in QuickSight. This solution does not require any custom development or ML domain expertise, as it leverages the built-in features of QuickSight ML Insights to automatically run anomaly detection and generate insights on the streaming data. QuickSight ML Insights can also create a visualization dashboard that automatically refreshes with the most recent data, and allows the data scientist to explore the outliers and their key drivers. References:

1: Simplify and automate anomaly detection in streaming data with Amazon Lookout for Metrics | AWS Machine Learning Blog

2: Detecting outliers with ML-powered anomaly detection - Amazon QuickSight

3: Real-time Outlier Detection Over Streaming Data - IEEE Xplore

4: Towards a deep learning-based outlier detection … - Journal of Big Data

For a model with low accuracy on both training and testing datasets, the following two strategies are effective:

Increase the number of passes and perform hyperparameter tuning: This approach allows the model to better learn from the existing data and improve performance through optimized hyperparameters.

Add domain-specific features and use more complex models: Adding relevant features that capture additional information from domain knowledge and using more complex model architectures can help the model capture patterns better, potentially improving accuracy.

Options B, D, and E would either reduce feature complexity or training data volume, which is less likely to improve performance when accuracy is low on both training and testing sets.

To compare a custom scikit-learn model with a benchmark model in a managed environment, the most effective and maintainable solution is to extend an existing SageMaker scikit-learn container.

“If you are using a framework like scikit-learn and need custom logic, you can extend the prebuilt SageMaker containers to include your own inference or training scripts. AWS manages the container base and you only maintain your code.”

This approach allows the data scientist to maintain control over model logic while letting SageMaker handle the container lifecycle, scaling, and infrastructure management—which aligns with the requirement for AWS to handle operational maintenance.