Professional-Machine-Learning-Engineer Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Questions and Answers

Kubeflow Pipelines allows for efficient use of compute resources through parallel task execution and caching, which eliminates redundant executions1. By enabling caching in all the steps of the Kubeflow pipeline, you can avoid re-running the same steps when you execute the pipeline multiple times. This can significantly speed up the pipeline execution and reduce your development time without incurring additional costs

• Monitoring model performance is an essential part of production readiness, as it allows the team to detect and address any issues that may arise after deployment, such as data drift, model degradation, or errors.
• Other Options:

Cloud Data Fusion is a fully managed, cloud-native data integration service that helps users efficiently build and manage ETL/ELT data pipelines. It provides a graphical interface to increase time efficiency and reduce complexity, and allows users to easily create and explore data pipelines using a code-free, point and click visual interface. Cloud Data Fusion also supports a broad range of data sources and formats, including on-premises data marts, and ensures data quality and security by using built-in transformation capabilities and Cloud Data Loss Prevention. Cloud Data Fusion lowers the total cost of ownership by handling performance, scalability, availability, security, and compliance needs automatically. References:

• Cloud Data Fusion documentation
• Cloud Data Fusion overview

The problem with the current approach is that it relies on the Cloud Translation API to translate the chat messages into a common language before embedding them with the in-house word2vec model. This introduces two sources of error: the translation quality and the word2vec quality. The translation quality may vary across different languages, depending on the availability of data and the complexity of the grammar and vocabulary. The word2vec quality may also vary depending on the size and diversity of the corpus used to train it. These errors may affect the performance of the classifier that moderates the chat messages, resulting in significant differences across the languages.

A better approach would be to train a classifier using the chat messages in their original language, without relying on the Cloud Translation API or the in-house word2vec model. This way, the classifier can learn the nuances and subtleties of each language, and avoid the errors introduced by the translation and embedding processes. This would also reduce the latency and cost of the moderation system, as it would not need to invoke the Cloud Translation API for every message. To train a classifier using the chat messages in their original language, one could use a multilingual pre-trained model such as mBERT or XLM-R, which can handle multiple languages and domains. Alternatively, one could train a separate classifier for each language, using a monolingual pre-trained model such as BERT or a custom model tailored to the specific language and task.

References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• [mBERT: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers]
• [XLM-R: Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale]
• [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding]

 AutoML Natural Language is a service that allows users to create custom natural language models using their own data and labels. It supports various natural language tasks, such as text classification, entity extraction, and sentiment analysis. AutoML Natural Language can be used to build a model to classify incoming calls by product, as it can extract custom entities from the transcribed calls and assign them to predefined categories. AutoML Natural Language also minimizes data preprocessing and development time, as it handles the data preparation, model training, and evaluation automatically. The other options are not as suitable for this scenario. AI Platform Training built-in algorithms are a set of pre-defined algorithms that can be used to train ML models on AI Platform, but they do not support natural language processing tasks. Cloud Natural Language API is a pre-trained service that provides natural language understanding capabilities, such as sentiment analysis, entity analysis, syntax analysis, and content classification. However, it does not support custom entities or categories, and may not recognize the product names from the calls. Building a custom model to identify the product keywords and then running them through a classification algorithm would require more data preprocessing and development time, as well as more coding and testing. References:

• AutoML Natural Language documentation
• AI Platform Training built-in algorithms documentation
• Cloud Natural Language API documentation

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

 The main advantage of implementing machine learning for this business case is that new problematic phrases can be identified in spam posts. This is because machine learning can learn from the data and the feedback, and adapt to the changing patterns and trends of spam posts. Machine learning can also capture the semantic and contextual meaning of the posts, and not just rely on the presence or absence of keywords. By using machine learning, you can improve the accuracy and coverage of your anti-spam service, and detect new and emerging types of spam posts that may not be captured by the keyword list.

The other options are not advantages of implementing machine learning for this business case for the following reasons:

• A. Posts can be compared to the keyword list much more quickly is not an advantage, as it does not improve the quality or effectiveness of the anti-spam service. It only improves the efficiency of the service, which is not the primary objective. Moreover, machine learning may not necessarily be faster than the keyword list, depending on the complexity and size of the model and the data.
• C. A much longer keyword list can be used to flag spam posts is not an advantage, as it does not address the limitations or challenges of the keyword list approach. It only increases the size and complexity of the keyword list, which can make it harder to maintain and update. Moreover, a longer keyword list may not improve the accuracy or coverage of the anti-spam service, as it may introduce more false positives or false negatives, or miss new and emerging types of spam posts.
• D. Spam posts can be flagged using far fewer keywords is not an advantage, as it does not reflect the capabilities or benefits of machine learning. It only reduces the size and complexity of the keyword list, which can make it easier to maintain and update. However, using fewer keywords may not improve the accuracy or coverage of the anti-spam service, as it may lose some information or meaning of the posts, or miss some types of spam posts.

References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• Machine Learning for Spam Detection
• Spam Detection Using Machine Learning

Cloud Vision API is a service that allows you to analyze images using pre-trained machine learning models1. You can use Cloud Vision API to perform various tasks, such as face detection, text extraction, logo recognition, and object localization1. Object localization is a feature that allows you to detect multiple objects in an image and draw bounding boxes around them2. You can also get the labels and confidence scores for each detected object2.

By sending user-submitted images to the Cloud Vision API, you can use object localization to identify all objects in the image and compare the results against a list of animals. You can use the OBJECT_LOCALIZATION feature type in the AnnotateImageRequest to request object localization3. You can then use the localizedObjectAnnotations field in the AnnotateImageResponse to get the list of detected objects, their labels, and their confidence scores. You can compare the labels with a predefined list of animals, such as dogs, cats, birds, etc., and determine whether the image has an animal or not.

This option is the best for your scenario, because it allows you to automatically and in near real time detect whether each uploaded photo has an animal, without requiring any manual labeling, model training, or model deployment. You can also prioritize time and minimize cost of your application development and deployment, as you can use the Cloud Vision API as a ready-to-use service, without needing any machine learning expertise or infrastructure.

The other options are not suitable for your scenario, because they either require manual labeling, model training, or model deployment, which would increase the time and cost of your application development and deployment, or they use object detection models, which are more complex and computationally expensive than object localization models, and are not necessary for your simple task of detecting whether an image has an animal or not.

References:

• Cloud Vision API | Google Cloud
• Object localization | Cloud Vision API | Google Cloud
• AnnotateImageRequest | Cloud Vision API | Google Cloud
• [AnnotateImageResponse | Cloud Vision API | Google Cloud]

 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

Model retraining is the process of updating an existing machine learning model with new data and parameters to improve its performance and accuracy. Model retraining is essential for maintaining the relevance and validity of the model, especially when the data or the environment changes over time. Model retraining can help to avoid or reduce the effects of model degradation, which is the phenomenon of the model’s predictive performance decreasing as it is tested on new datasets within rapidly evolving environments1.

For the use case of predicting sales numbers, model accuracy is crucial, because the production model is required to keep up with market changes. Market changes can affect the demand, supply, price, and preference of the products, and thus influence the sales numbers. If the model is not retrained with new data that reflects the market changes, it may become outdated and inaccurate, and fail to capture the patterns and trends of the sales numbers. Therefore, the most likely issue that is causing the steady decline in model accuracy is the lack of model retraining.

The other options are not as likely as option B, because they are not directly related to the model’s ability to adapt to market changes. Option A, poor data quality, may affect the model’s accuracy, but it is not a specific cause of model degradation over time. Option C, too few layers in the model for capturing information, may affect the model’s complexity and expressiveness, but it is not a specific cause of model degradation over time. Option D, incorrect data split ratio during model training, evaluation, validation, and test, may affect the model’s generalization and validation, but it is not a specific cause of model degradation over time. Therefore, option B, lack of model retraining, is the best answer for this question.

References:

• Beware Steep Decline: Understanding Model Degradation In Machine Learning Models

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”. Dataflow2 is a fully managed, fast, and easy-to-use service for running Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop clusters on Google Cloud. Dataflow supports both batch and streaming data processing pipelines. However, if your use case requires real-time inference, you need to ensure that the data preprocessing logic is applied consistently between training and serving. One way to achieve this is to refactor the transformation code in the batch data pipeline so that it can be used outside of the pipeline, and use the same code in the endpoint. This way, you can avoid data skew and drift issues that might arise from using different preprocessing methods for training and serving. Therefore, option B is the best way to ensure the data preprocessing logic is applied consistently between training and serving. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Dataflow
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

 A cloud-based backend system is a system that runs on a cloud platform and provides services or resources to other applications or users. A cloud-based backend system can be used to submit training jobs, which are tasks that involve training a machine learning model on a given dataset using a specific framework and configuration1

However, a cloud-based backend system can also have some drawbacks, such as:

• High maintenance: A cloud-based backend system may require a lot of administration and management, such as provisioning, scaling, monitoring, and troubleshooting the cloud resources and services. This can be time-consuming and costly, and may distract from the core business objectives2
• Low flexibility: A cloud-based backend system may not support all the frameworks and libraries that the data scientists need to use for their training jobs. This can limit the choices and capabilities of the data scientists, and affect the quality and performance of their models3
• Poor integration: A cloud-based backend system may not integrate well with other cloud services or tools that the data scientists need to use for their machine learning workflows, such as data processing, model deployment, or model monitoring. This can create compatibility and interoperability issues, and reduce the efficiency and productivity of the data scientists.

Therefore, it may be better to use a managed service instead of a cloud-based backend system to submit training jobs. A managed service is a service that is provided and operated by a third-party provider, and offers various benefits, such as:

• Low maintenance: A managed service handles the administration and management of the cloud resources and services, and abstracts away the complexity and details of the underlying infrastructure. This can save time and money, and allow the data scientists to focus on their core tasks2
• High flexibility: A managed service can support multiple frameworks and libraries that the data scientists need to use for their training jobs, and allow them to customize and configure their training environments and parameters. This can enhance the choices and capabilities of the data scientists, and improve the quality and performance of their models3
• Easy integration: A managed service can integrate seamlessly with other cloud services or tools that the data scientists need to use for their machine learning workflows, and provide a unified and consistent interface and experience. This can solve the compatibility and interoperability issues, and increase the efficiency and productivity of the data scientists.

One of the best options for using a managed service to submit training jobs is to use the AI Platform custom containers feature to receive training jobs using any framework. AI Platform is a Google Cloud service that provides a platform for building, deploying, and managing machine learning models. AI Platform supports various machine learning frameworks, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, and XGBoost, and provides various features, such as hyperparameter tuning, distributed training, online prediction, and model monitoring.

The AI Platform custom containers feature allows the data scientists to use any framework or library that they want for their training jobs, and package their training application and dependencies as a Docker container image. The data scientists can then submit their training jobs to AI Platform, and specify the container image and the training parameters. AI Platform will run the training jobs on the cloud infrastructure, and handle the scaling, logging, and monitoring of the training jobs. The data scientists can also use the AI Platform features to optimize, deploy, and manage their models.

The other options are not as suitable or feasible. Configuring Kubeflow to run on Google Kubernetes Engine and receive training jobs through TFJob is not ideal, as Kubeflow is mainly designed for TensorFlow-based training jobs, and does not support other frameworks or libraries. Creating a library of VM images on Compute Engine and publishing these images on a centralized repository is not optimal, as Compute Engine is a low-level service that requires a lot of administration and management, and does not provide the features and integrations of AI Platform. Setting up Slurm workload manager to receive jobs that can be scheduled to run on your cloud infrastructure is not relevant, as Slurm is a tool for managing and scheduling jobs on a cluster of nodes, and does not provide a managed service for training jobs.

References: 1: Cloud computing 2: Managed services 3: Machine learning frameworks : [Machine learning workflow] : [AI Platform overview] : [Custom containers for training]

 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.

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]

Federated learning is a machine learning technique that enables organizations to train AI models on decentralized data without centralizing or sharing it1. It allows data privacy, continual learning, and better performance on end-user devices2. Federated learning works by sending the model parameters to the devices, where they are updated locally on the device’s data, and then aggregating the updated parameters on a central server to form a global model3. This way, the data never leaves the device and the model can learn from a large and diverse dataset.

Federated learning is suitable for the use case of building an ML-based biometric authentication for the bank’s mobile app that verifies a customer’s identity based on their fingerprint. Fingerprints are considered highly sensitive personal information and cannot be downloaded and stored into the bank databases. By using federated learning, the bank can train and deploy an ML model that can recognize fingerprints without compromising the data privacy of the customers. The model can also adapt to the variations and changes in the fingerprints over time and improve its accuracy and reliability. Therefore, federated learning is the best learning strategy for this use case.

 The Cloud DLP API is a service that allows users to inspect, classify, and de-identify sensitive data. It can be used to scan data in Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Datastore, and Cloud Pub/Sub. The best way to ensure that the PII is not accessible by unauthorized individuals is to use a quarantine bucket to store the data before scanning it with the DLP API. This way, the data is isolated from other applications and users until it is classified and moved to the appropriate bucket. The other options are not as secure or efficient, as they either expose the data to BigQuery before scanning, or scan the data after writing it to a non-sensitive bucket. References:

• Cloud DLP documentation
• Scanning and classifying Cloud Storage files

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

The best option to build a comprehensive system that recommends images to users that are similar in appearance to their own uploaded images is to download a pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN), and use the model to generate embeddings of the input images. Embeddings are low-dimensional representations of high-dimensional data that capture the essential features and semantics of the data. By using a pretrained CNN, you can leverage the knowledge learned from large-scale image datasets, such as ImageNet, and apply it to your own domain. A pretrained CNN can be used as a feature extractor, where the output of the last hidden layer (or any intermediate layer) is taken as the embedding vector for the input image. You can then measure the similarity between embeddings using a distance metric, such as cosine similarity or Euclidean distance, and recommend images that have the highest similarity scores to the user’s uploaded image. Option A is incorrect because downloading a pretrained CNN and fine-tuning the model to predict hashtags based on the input images may not capture the visual similarity of the images, as hashtags may not reflect the appearance of the images accurately. For example, two images of different breeds of dogs may have the same hashtag #dog, but they may not look similar to each other. Moreover, fine-tuning the model may require additional data and computational resources, and it may not generalize well to new images that have different or missing hashtags. Option B is incorrect because retrieving image labels and dominant colors from the input images using the Vision API may not capture the visual similarity of the images, as labels and colors may not reflect the fine-grained details of the images. For example, two images of the same breed of dog may have different labels and colors depending on the background, lighting, and angle of the image. Moreover, using the Vision API may incur additional costs and latency, and it may not be able to handle custom or domain-specific labels. Option C is incorrect because using the provided hashtags to create a collaborative filtering algorithm may not capture the visual similarity of the images, as collaborative filtering relies on the ratings or preferences of users, not the features of the images. For example, two images of different animals may have similar ratings or preferences from users, but they may not look similar to each other. Moreover, collaborative filtering may suffer from the cold start problem, where new images or users that have no ratings or preferences cannot be recommended. References:

• Image similarity search with TensorFlow
• Image embeddings documentation
• Pretrained models documentation
• Similarity metrics 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

• Option A is not the best answer because it requires storing the pickled model in Cloud Storage, which may incur additional cost and latency for loading the model. It also requires building a Flask-based app, which may not be necessary for a simple data preprocessing step.
• Option B is not the best answer because it requires building a Flask-based app, which may not be necessary for a simple data preprocessing step. It also requires packaging the app and the pickled model in a custom container image, which may increase the size and complexity of the image.
• Option C is not the best answer because it requires packaging the pickled model in a custom container image, which may increase the size and complexity of the image. It also does not leverage the Vertex built-in container image, which may provide some optimizations and integrations for XGBoost models.
• Option D is the best answer because it leverages the Vertex built-in container image, which may provide some optimizations and integrations for XGBoost models. It also allows storing the pickled model in Cloud Storage, which may reduce the size and complexity of the image. It also allows building a custom predictor class based on XGBoost Predictor from the Vertex AI SDK, which may simplify the data preprocessing step and the prediction logic.

 Entity extraction is a natural language processing (NLP) task that involves identifying and extracting specific types of information from text, such as names, dates, locations, etc. Entity extraction can help you analyze a corpus of recipes and extract each ingredient and cookware mentioned in them. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and managing machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. It provides a service for AutoML entity extraction, which allows you to create and train custom entity extraction models without writing any code. You can use Vertex AI to create a text dataset for entity extraction, and label your data with two entities: “ingredient” and “cookware”. You need to label at least 200 examples of each entity type to train an AutoML entity extraction model. You can also use a holdout dataset to evaluate the performance of your model, such as precision, recall, and F1-score. This solution can help you build a machine learning model to scan a corpus of recipes and extract each ingredient and cookware mentioned in them, and use the results to help users with meal planning. References:

• AutoML Entity Extraction | Vertex AI
• Preparing data for AutoML Entity Extraction | Vertex AI

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 productionizing a Keras model is to use TensorFlow Extended (TFX), a framework for building end-to-end machine learning pipelines that can handle large-scale data and complex workflows. TFX provides standard components for data ingestion, transformation, validation, analysis, training, tuning, serving, and monitoring. TFX pipelines can be orchestrated with Vertex AI Pipelines, a managed service that runs on Google Cloud Platform and leverages Kubernetes and Argo. Vertex AI Pipelines allows you to automate the execution of your TFX pipeline steps, schedule retraining jobs, and scale up or down the resources as needed. By using TFX and Vertex AI Pipelines, you can take advantage of the following benefits:

• You can reuse the existing code in your Jupyter notebook, as TFX supports Keras as a first-class citizen. You can also use the Keras Tuner to optimize your model hyperparameters.
• You can ensure data quality and consistency by using the TFX Data Validation component, which can detect anomalies, drift, and skew in your data. You can also use the TFX SchemaGen component to generate a schema for your data and enforce it throughout the pipeline.
• You can analyze your model performance and fairness by using the TFX Model Analysis component, which can produce various metrics and visualizations. You can also use the TFX Model Validation component to compare your new model with a baseline model and set thresholds for deploying the model to production.
• You can deploy your model to various serving platforms by using the TFX Pusher component, which can push your model to Vertex AI, Cloud AI Platform, TensorFlow Serving, or TensorFlow Lite. You can also use the TFX Model Registry to manage the versions and metadata of your models.
• You can monitor your model performance and health by using the TFX Model Monitor component, which can detect data drift, concept drift, and prediction skew in your model. You can also use the TFX Evaluator component to compute metrics and validate your model against a baseline or a slice of data.
• You can reduce the cost and complexity of managing your own infrastructure by using Vertex AI Pipelines, which provides a serverless environment for running your TFX pipeline. You can also use the Vertex AI Experiments and Vertex AI TensorBoard to track and visualize your pipeline runs.

References:

• [TensorFlow Extended (TFX)]
• [Vertex AI Pipelines]
• [TFX User Guide]

The option C is the most efficient and scalable solution for deploying a machine learning workflow with multiple models while ensuring version control and minimizing compute resource utilization. By exposing each model as an endpoint in Vertex AI Endpoints, it allows for easy versioning and management of individual models. Using Cloud Run to orchestrate the workflow ensures that the application can scale down to zero, thus minimizing resource utilization when not in use. Cloud Run is a service that allows you to run stateless containers on a fully managed environment or on Google Kubernetes Engine. You can use Cloud Run to invoke the endpoints of each model in the workflow and pass the data between them. You can also use Cloud Run to handle the input and output of the workflow and provide an HTTP interface for the application. References:

• Vertex AI Endpoints documentation
• Cloud Run documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

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

The best business metric to track to measure the model’s performance is user engagement as measured by the number of battles played daily per user. This metric reflects the main goal of the model, which is to enhance the user experience and satisfaction by creating balanced and fair battles. If the model is successful, it should increase the user retention and loyalty, as well as the word-of-mouth and referrals. This metric is also easy to measure and interpret, as it can be directly obtained from the user activity data.

The other options are not optimal for the following reasons:

• A. Average time players wait before being assigned to a team is not a good metric, as it does not capture the quality or outcome of the battles. It only measures the efficiency of the model, which is not the primary objective. Moreover, this metric can be influenced by external factors, such as the availability and demand of players, the network latency, and the server capacity.
• B. Precision and recall of assigning players to teams based on their predicted versus actual ability is not a good metric, as it is difficult to measure and interpret. It requires having a reliable and consistent way of estimating the player’s ability, which can be subjective and dynamic. It also requires having a ground truth label for each assignment, which can be costly and impractical to obtain. Moreover, this metric does not reflect the user feedback or satisfaction, which is the ultimate goal of the model.
• D. Rate of return as measured by additional revenue generated minus the cost of developing a new model is not a good metric, as it is not directly related to the model’s performance. It measures the profitability of the model, which is a secondary objective. Moreover, this metric can be affected by many other factors, such as the market conditions, the pricing strategy, the marketing campaigns, and the competition.

References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• How to measure user engagement
• How to choose the right metrics for your machine learning model

This answer is correct because it allows you to use the trained TensorFlow model for batch predictions on text data stored in BigQuery without any additional processing or overhead. Al Platform provides a service for running batch prediction jobs that can take input data from BigQuery or Cloud Storage and write the output to BigQuery or Cloud Storage. You can use the SavedModel format to export your TensorFlow model to Cloud Storage and then submit a batch prediction job that points to the model location and the input data location. Al Platform will handle the scaling and distribution of the prediction requests and return the results in the specified output location. References:

• [Al Platform: Batch prediction overview]
• [Al Platform: Exporting a SavedModel for prediction]

The best option for deploying a custom tabular ML model to production for online predictions, and monitoring the feature distribution over time with minimal effort, using a model that was provided by the bank’s vendor, the training data is not available due to its sensitivity, and the model is packaged as a Vertex AI Model serving container which accepts a string as input for each prediction instance, is to upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and provide an instance schema. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to serve and monitor your model with minimal code and configuration. 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 Vertex AI Model Registry is a resource that can store and manage your models on Vertex AI. A Vertex AI Model Registry can help you organize and track your models, and access various model information, such as model name, model description, and model labels. A Vertex AI Model serving container is a resource that can run your custom model code on Vertex AI. A Vertex AI Model serving container can help you package your model code and dependencies into a container image, and deploy the container image to an online prediction endpoint. A Vertex AI Model serving container can accept various input formats, such as JSON, CSV, or TFRecord. A string input format is a type of input format that accepts a string as input for each prediction instance. A string input format can help you encode your feature values into a single string, and separate them by commas. By uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, you can serve your model for online predictions with minimal code and configuration. You can use the Vertex AI API or the gcloud command-line tool to upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and provide the model name, model description, and model labels. You can also use the Vertex AI API or the gcloud command-line tool to deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, and provide the endpoint name, endpoint description, endpoint labels, and endpoint resources. A Vertex AI Model Monitoring job is a resource that can monitor the performance and quality of your deployed models on Vertex AI. A Vertex AI Model Monitoring job can help you detect and diagnose issues with your models, such as data drift, prediction drift, training/serving skew, or model staleness. Feature drift is a type of model monitoring metric that measures the difference between the distributions of the features used to train the model and the features used to serve the model over time. Feature drift can indicate that the online data is changing over time, and the model performance is degrading. By creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema, you can monitor the feature distribution over time with minimal effort. You can use the Vertex AI API or the gcloud command-line tool to create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job, and provide the monitoring objective, the monitoring frequency, the alerting threshold, and the notification channel. You can also provide an instance schema, which is a JSON file that describes the features and their types in the prediction input data. An instance schema can help Vertex AI Model Monitoring parse and analyze the string input format, and calculate the feature distributions and distance scores1.

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

• Option B: Uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema would not help you monitor the changes in the online data over time, and could cause errors or poor performance. Feature skew is a type of model monitoring metric that measures the difference between the distributions of the features used to train the model and the features used to serve the model at a given point in time. Feature skew can indicate that the model is not trained on the representative data, or that the data is changing over time. By creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema, you can monitor the feature distribution at a given point in time with minimal effort. However, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema would not help you monitor the changes in the online data over time, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to use the Vertex AI API or the gcloud command-line tool to upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job, and provide an instance schema. Moreover, this option would not monitor the feature drift, which is a more direct and relevant metric for measuring the changes in the online data over time, and the model performance and quality1.
• Option C: Refactoring the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective would require more skills and steps than uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema. A key-value pair input format is a type of input format that accepts a key-value pair as input for each prediction instance. A key-value pair input format can help you specify the feature names and values in a JSON object, and separate them by colons. By refactoring the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, you can serve and monitor your model with minimal code and configuration. You can write code to refactor the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, and use the Vertex AI API or the gcloud command-line tool to upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, and create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job. However, refactoring the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective would require more skills and steps than uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema. You would need to write code, refactor the serving container, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, and create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job. Moreover, this option would not use the instance schema, which is a JSON file that can help Vertex AI Model Monitoring parse and analyze the string input format, and calculate the feature distributions and distance scores1.
• Option D: Refactoring the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective would require more skills and steps than uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema, and would not help you monitor the changes in the online data over time, and could cause errors or poor performance. Feature skew is a type of model monitoring metric that measures the difference between the distributions of the features used to train the model and the features used to serve the model at a given point in time. Feature skew can indicate that the model is not trained on the representative data, or that the data is changing over time. By creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective, you can monitor the feature distribution at a given point in time with minimal effort. However, refactoring the serving container to accept key-value pairs as input format, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature skew detection as the monitoring objective would require more skills and steps than uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry and deploying the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, creating a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job with feature drift detection as the monitoring objective, and providing an instance schema, and would not help you monitor the changes in the online data over time, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, refactor the serving container, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to a Vertex AI endpoint, and create a Vertex AI Model Monitoring job. Moreover, this option would not monitor the feature drift, which is a more direct and relevant metric for measuring the changes in the online data over time, and the model performance and quality1.

References:

• Using Model Monitoring | Vertex AI | Google Cloud

The best option for using Vertex AI Model Monitoring for drift detection and minimizing the cost is to use the features and the feature attributions for monitoring, and set a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 0 than 1. This option allows you to leverage the power and flexibility of Google Cloud to detect feature drift in the input predict requests for custom models, and reduce the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job. Vertex AI Model Monitoring is a service that can track and compare the results of multiple machine learning runs. Vertex AI Model Monitoring can monitor the model’s prediction input data for feature skew and drift. Feature drift occurs when the feature data distribution in production changes over time. If the original training data is not available, you can enable drift detection to monitor your models for feature drift. Vertex AI Model Monitoring uses TensorFlow Data Validation (TFDV) to calculate the distributions and distance scores for each feature, and compares them with a baseline distribution. The baseline distribution is the statistical distribution of the feature’s values in the training data. If the training data is not available, the baseline distribution is calculated from the first 1000 prediction requests that the model receives. If the distance score for a feature exceeds an alerting threshold that you set, Vertex AI Model Monitoring sends you an email alert. However, if you use a custom model, you can also enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift. Feature attribution monitoring analyzes the feature attributions, which are the contributions of each feature to the prediction output. Feature attribution monitoring can help you identify the features that have the most impact on the model performance, and the features that have the most significant drift over time. Feature attribution monitoring can also help you understand the relationship between the features and the prediction output, and the correlation between the features1. The prediction-sampling-rate is a parameter that determines the percentage of prediction requests that are logged and analyzed by the model monitoring job. Using a lower prediction-sampling-rate can reduce the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job, but also the quality and validity of the data. Using a lower prediction-sampling-rate can introduce sampling bias and noise into the data, and make the model monitoring job miss some important features or patterns of the data. However, using a higher prediction-sampling-rate can increase the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job, and also the amount of data that needs to be processed and analyzed. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the prediction-sampling-rate and the cost and accuracy of the model monitoring job, and the optimal prediction-sampling-rate depends on the business objective and the data characteristics2. By using the features and the feature attributions for monitoring, and setting a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 0 than 1, you can use Vertex AI Model Monitoring for drift detection and minimize the cost.

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

• Option A: Using the features for monitoring and setting a monitoring-frequency value that is higher than the default would not enable feature attribution monitoring, and could increase the cost of the model monitoring job. The monitoring-frequency is a parameter that determines how often the model monitoring job analyzes the logged prediction requests and calculates the distributions and distance scores for each feature. Using a higher monitoring-frequency can increase the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job, but also the computation costs of the model monitoring job. Moreover, using the features for monitoring would not enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift and the model performance1.
• Option B: Using the features for monitoring and setting a prediction-sampling-rate value that is closer to 1 than 0 would not enable feature attribution monitoring, and could increase the cost of the model monitoring job. The prediction-sampling-rate is a parameter that determines the percentage of prediction requests that are logged and analyzed by the model monitoring job. Using a higher prediction-sampling-rate can increase the quality and validity of the data, but also the storage and computation costs of the model monitoring job. Moreover, using the features for monitoring would not enable feature attribution monitoring, which can provide more insights into the feature drift and the model performance12.
• Option C: Using the features and the feature attributions for monitoring and setting a monitoring-frequency value that is lower than the default would enable feature attribution monitoring, but could reduce the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job. The monitoring-frequency is a parameter that determines how often the model monitoring job analyzes the logged prediction requests and calculates the distributions and distance scores for each feature. Using a lower monitoring-frequency can reduce the computation costs of the model monitoring job, but also the frequency and timeliness of the model monitoring job. This can make the model monitoring job less responsive and effective in detecting and alerting the feature drift1.

References:

• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 4: Evaluation
• Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.3 Monitoring ML models in production
• Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.3: Monitoring ML Models
• Using Model Monitoring
• Understanding the score threshold slider

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

 Cloud Storage is a scalable and cost-effective storage service for any type of data. By storing image files in Cloud Storage, you can access them from anywhere and avoid the overhead of managing your own storage infrastructure. However, accessing image files directly from Cloud Storage can be slow and inefficient, especially for large-scale training. A better option is to use serialized records, such as TFRecord or Apache Avro, which are binary formats that store multiple images and their labels in a single file. Serialized records can improve the data throughput and reduce the network latency, as well as enable data compression and sharding. You can use TensorFlow or Apache Beam APIs to create and read serialized records from Cloud Storage. This solution requires minimal code changes and can speed up your training time significantly. References:

• Cloud Storage | Google Cloud
• TFRecord and tf.Example | TensorFlow Core
• Apache Avro 1.10.2 Specification
• Using Apache Beam with Cloud Storage | Cloud Storage

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

 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]

 The problem of the text classifier is that it has a high false positive rate for comments that reference certain underrepresented religious groups. This means that the classifier is not able to distinguish between toxic and non-toxic language when those groups are mentioned. One possible reason for this is that the training data does not have enough examples of non-toxic comments that reference those groups, leading to a biased model. Therefore, a possible solution is to add synthetic training data where those phrases are used in non-toxic ways, which can help the model learn to generalize better and reduce the false positive rate. Synthetic data is artificially generated data that mimics the characteristics of real data, and can be used to augment the existing data when the real data is scarce or imbalanced. References:

• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 5: Responsible AI, Week 3: Fairness
• Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 4: Ensuring solution quality, 4.4 Evaluating fairness and bias in ML models
• Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 9: Responsible AI, Section 9.3: Fairness and Bias

The best option for dealing with the missing categorical variable in the test set is to apply one-hot encoding on the categorical variables in the test data. This option has the following advantages:

• It ensures the consistency and compatibility of the data format for the ML model, as the one-hot encoding transforms the categorical variables into binary vectors that can be easily processed by the model. By applying one-hot encoding on the categorical variables in the test data, you can match the number and order of the features in the test data with the training data, and avoid any errors or discrepancies in the model prediction.
• It preserves the information and relevance of the data for the ML model, as the one-hot encoding creates a separate feature for each possible value of the categorical variable, and assigns a value of 1 to the feature corresponding to the actual value of the variable, and 0 to the rest. By applying one-hot encoding on the categorical variables in the test data, you can retain the original meaning and importance of the categorical variable, and avoid any loss or distortion of the data.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

• Option A: Randomly redistributing the data, with 70% for the training set and 30% for the test set, introduces additional complexity and risk. This option requires reshuffling and splitting the data again, which can be tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, this option may not guarantee that the missing categorical variable will be present in the test set, as it depends on the randomness of the data distribution. Furthermore, this option may affect the quality and validity of the ML model, as it may change the data characteristics and patterns that the model has learned from the original training set.
• Option B: Using sparse representation in the test set introduces additional overhead and inefficiency. This option requires converting the categorical variables in the test set into sparse vectors, which are vectors that have mostly zero values and only store the indices and values of the non-zero elements. However, using sparse representation in the test set may not be compatible with the ML model, as the model expects the input data to have the same format and dimensionality as the training data, which uses one-hot encoding. Moreover, using sparse representation in the test set may not be efficient or scalable, as it requires additional computation and memory to store and process the sparse vectors.
• Option D: Collecting more data representing all categories introduces additional cost and delay. This option requires obtaining and labeling more data that contains the missing categorical variable, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, this option may not be feasible or necessary, as the missing categorical variable may not be available or relevant for the test data, depending on the data source or the business problem.

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 input/output execution performance of a TensorFlow model depends on how efficiently the model can read and process the data from the data source. Reading and processing data from CSV files can be slow and inefficient, especially if the data is large and distributed. Therefore, to improve the input/output execution performance, one should use a more suitable data format and storage system.

One of the best options for improving the input/output execution performance is to convert the CSV files into shards of TFRecords, and store the data in Cloud Storage. TFRecord is a binary data format that can store a sequence of serialized TensorFlow examples. TFRecord has several advantages over CSV, such as:

• Faster data loading: TFRecord can be read and processed faster than CSV, as it avoids the overhead of parsing and decoding the text data. TFRecord also supports compression and checksums, which can reduce the data size and ensure data integrity1
• Better performance: TFRecord can improve the performance of the model, as it allows the model to access the data in a sequential and streaming manner, and leverage the tf.data API to build efficient data pipelines. TFRecord also supports sharding and interleaving, which can increase the parallelism and throughput of the data processing2
• Easier integration: TFRecord can integrate seamlessly with TensorFlow, as it is the native data format for TensorFlow. TFRecord also supports various types of data, such as images, text, audio, and video, and can store the data schema and metadata along with the data3

Cloud Storage is a scalable and reliable object storage service that can store any amount of data. Cloud Storage has several advantages over other storage systems, such as:

• High availability: Cloud Storage can provide high availability and durability for the data, as it replicates the data across multiple regions and zones, and supports versioning and lifecycle management. Cloud Storage also offers various storage classes, such as Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive, to meet different performance and cost requirements4
• Low latency: Cloud Storage can provide low latency and high bandwidth for the data, as it supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols, and integrates with other Google Cloud services, such as AI Platform, Dataflow, and BigQuery. Cloud Storage also supports resumable uploads and downloads, and parallel composite uploads, which can improve the data transfer speed and reliability5
• Easy access: Cloud Storage can provide easy access and management for the data, as it supports various tools and libraries, such as gsutil, Cloud Console, and Cloud Storage Client Libraries. Cloud Storage also supports fine-grained access control and encryption, which can ensure the data security and privacy.

The other options are not as effective or feasible. Loading the data into BigQuery and reading the data from BigQuery is not recommended, as BigQuery is mainly designed for analytical queries on large-scale data, and does not support streaming or real-time data processing. Loading the data into Cloud Bigtable and reading the data from Bigtable is not ideal, as Cloud Bigtable is mainly designed for low-latency and high-throughput key-value operations on sparse and wide tables, and does not support complex data types or schemas. Converting the CSV files into shards of TFRecords and storing the data in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is not optimal, as HDFS is not natively supported by TensorFlow, and requires additional configuration and dependencies, such as Hadoop, Spark, or Beam.

References: 1: TFRecord and tf.Example 2: Better performance with the tf.data API 3: TensorFlow Data Validation 4: Cloud Storage overview 5: Performance : [How-to guides]

 Labels are key-value pairs that can be attached to any AI Platform resource, such as jobs, models, versions, or endpoints1. Labels can help you organize your resources into descriptive categories, such as project, team, environment, or purpose. You can use labels to filter the results when you list or monitor your resources, or to group them for billing or quota purposes2. Using labels is a simple and scalable way to manage your AI Platform resources without creating unnecessary complexity or overhead. Therefore, using labels to organize resources is the best strategy for this use case.

References:

• Using labels
• Filtering and grouping by labels

 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]

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “track the lineage of pipeline artifacts”. Vertex AI Experiments2 is a service that allows you to track and compare the results of your model training runs. Vertex AI Experiments automatically logs metadata such as hyperparameters, metrics, and artifacts for each training run. You can use Vertex AI Experiments to train your custom model using TensorFlow, PyTorch, XGBoost, or scikit-learn. Vertex AI Model Registry3 is a service that allows you to manage your trained models in a central location. You can use Vertex AI Model Registry to register your model, add labels and descriptions, and view the model’s lineage graph. The lineage graph shows the artifacts and executions that are part of the model’s creation, such as the dataset, the training pipeline, and the evaluation metrics. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

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

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

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)

In this scenario, the goal is to create a custom fraud detection model using AutoML Tables. Fraud detection is a type of binary classification problem, where the model needs to predict whether a transaction is fraudulent or not. The optimization objective is a metric that defines how the model is trained and evaluated. AutoML Tables allows you to choose from different optimization objectives for binary classification problems, such as Log loss, Precision at a Recall value, AUC PR, and AUC ROC.

To choose the best optimization objective for fraud detection, we need to consider the characteristics of the problem and the data. Fraud detection is a problem where the positive class (fraudulent transactions) is very rare compared to the negative class (legitimate transactions). This means that the data is highly imbalanced, and the model needs to be sensitive to the minority class. Moreover, fraud detection is a problem where the cost of false negatives (missing a fraudulent transaction) is much higher than the cost of false positives (flagging a legitimate transaction as fraudulent). This means that the model needs to have high recall (the ability to detect all fraudulent transactions) while maintaining high precision (the ability to avoid false alarms).

Given these considerations, the best optimization objective for fraud detection is the one that maximizes the area under the precision-recall curve (AUC PR) value. The AUC PR value is a metric that measures the trade-off between precision and recall for different probability thresholds. A higher AUC PR value means that the model can achieve high precision and high recall at the same time. The AUC PR value is also more suitable for imbalanced data than the AUC ROC value, which measures the trade-off between the true positive rate and the false positive rate. The AUC ROC value can be misleading for imbalanced data, as it can give a high score even if the model has low recall or low precision.

Therefore, option C is the correct answer. Option A is not suitable, as Log loss is a metric that measures the difference between the predicted probabilities and the actual labels, and does not account for the trade-off between precision and recall. Option B is not suitable, as Precision at a Recall value is a metric that measures the precision at a fixed recall level, and does not account for the trade-off between precision and recall at different thresholds. Option D is not suitable, as AUC ROC is a metric that can be misleading for imbalanced data, as explained above.

References:

• AutoML Tables documentation
• Optimization objectives for binary classification
• Precision-Recall Curves: How to Easily Evaluate Machine Learning Models in No Time
• ROC Curves and Area Under the Curve Explained (video)

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

 Using bfloat16 instead of float32 can reduce the memory usage and training time of the model, while having minimal impact on the accuracy. Bfloat16 is a 16-bit floating-point format that preserves the range of 32-bit floating-point numbers, but reduces the precision from 24 bits to 8 bits. This means that bfloat16 can store the same magnitude of numbers as float32, but with less detail. Bfloat16 is supported by TPUs and some GPUs, and can be used as a drop-in replacement for float32 in most cases. Bfloat16 can also improve the numerical stability of the model, as it reduces the risk of overflow and underflow errors.

Reducing the global batch size, the number of layers, or the dimensions of the images can also reduce the memory usage and training time of the model, but they can also affect the model’s accuracy and performance. Reducing the global batch size can make the model less stable and converge slower, as it reduces the amount of information available for each gradient update. Reducing the number of layers can make the model less expressive and powerful, as it reduces the depth and complexity of the network. Reducing the dimensions of the images can make the model less accurate and robust, as it reduces the resolution and quality of the input data. References:

• Bfloat16: The secret to high performance on Cloud TPUs
• Bfloat16 floating-point format
• How does Batch Size impact your model learning

• Option A is incorrect because using AI Platform notebooks to perform a Lasso regression analysis on your model, which will eliminate features that do not provide a strong signal, is not a suitable way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. Lasso regression is a method of feature selection that applies a penalty to the coefficients of the linear model, and shrinks them to zero for irrelevant features1. However, this method assumes that the model is linear and additive, which may not be the case for a TensorFlow model. Moreover, this method does not provide feature attributions for each prediction, but rather for the entire dataset.
• Option B is incorrect because streaming prediction results to BigQuery, and using BigQuery’s CORR(X1, X2) function to calculate the Pearson correlation coefficient between each feature and the target variable, is not a valid way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. The Pearson correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear relationship between two variables, ranging from -1 to 12. However, this method does not account for the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model. Moreover, this method does not provide feature attributions for each prediction, but rather for the entire dataset.
• Option C is correct because using the AI Explanations feature on AI Platform, and submitting each prediction request with the ‘explain’ keyword to retrieve feature attributions using the sampled Shapley method, is the best way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. AI Explanations is a service that allows you to get feature attributions for your deployed models on AI Platform3. Feature attributions are values that indicate how much each feature contributed to the prediction for a given instance4. The sampled Shapley method is a technique that uses the Shapley value, a game-theoretic concept, to measure the contribution of each feature to the prediction5. By using AI Explanations, you can get feature attributions for each prediction request, and identify the most important features for each customer.
• Option D is incorrect because using the What-If tool in Google Cloud to determine how your model will perform when individual features are excluded, and ranking the feature importance in order of those that caused the most significant performance drop when removed from the model, is not a practical way to determine which customer attribute has the most predictive power for each prediction served by the model. The What-If tool is a tool that allows you to visualize and analyze your ML models and datasets. However, this method requires manually editing or removing features for each instance, and observing the change in the prediction. This method is not scalable or efficient, and may not capture the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model.

References:

• Lasso regression
• Pearson correlation coefficient
• AI Explanations overview
• Feature attributions
• Sampled Shapley method
• [What-If tool overview]

• Option A is incorrect because using latitude, longitude, and product type as features, and using profit as model output is not the best way to develop an ML model to predict the company’s profitability for a new line of naturally flavored bottled waters in different locations. This option does not capture the interaction between latitude and longitude, which may affect the profitability of the product. For example, the same product may have different profitability in different regions, depending on the climate, culture, or preferences of the customers. Moreover, this option does not account for the granularity of the location data, which may be too fine or too coarse for the model. For example, using the exact coordinates of a city may not be meaningful, as the profitability may vary within the city, or using the country name may not be informative, as the profitability may vary across the country.
• Option B is incorrect because using latitude, longitude, and product type as features, and using revenue and expenses as model outputs is not a suitable way to develop an ML model to predict the company’s profitability for a new line of naturally flavored bottled waters in different locations. This option has the same drawbacks as option A, as it does not capture the interaction between latitude and longitude, or account for the granularity of the location data. Moreover, this option does not directly predict the profitability of the product, which is the target variable of interest. Instead, it predicts the revenue and expenses of the product, which are intermediate variables that depend on other factors, such as the price, the cost, or the demand of the product. To obtain the profitability, we would need to subtract the expenses from the revenue, which may introduce errors or uncertainties in the prediction.
• Option C is correct because using product type and the feature cross of latitude with longitude, followed by binning, as features, and using profit as model output is a good way to develop an ML model to predict the company’s profitability for a new line of naturally flavored bottled waters in different locations. This option captures the interaction between latitude and longitude, which may affect the profitability of the product, by creating a feature cross of these two features. A feature cross is a synthetic feature that combines the values of two or more features into a single feature1. This option also accounts for the granularity of the location data, by binning the feature cross into discrete buckets. Binning is a technique that groups continuous values into intervals, which can reduce the noise and complexity of the data2. Moreover, this option directly predicts the profitability of the product, which is the target variable of interest, by using it as the model output.
• Option D is incorrect because using product type and the feature cross of latitude with longitude, followed by binning, as features, and using revenue and expenses as model outputs is not a valid way to develop an ML model to predict the company’s profitability for a new line of naturally flavored bottled waters in different locations. This option has the same advantages as option C, as it captures the interaction between latitude and longitude, and accounts for the granularity of the location data, by creating a feature cross and binning it. However, this option does not directly predict the profitability of the product, which is the target variable of interest, but rather predicts the revenue and expenses of the product, which are intermediate variables that depend on other factors, as explained in option B.

References:

• Feature cross
• Binning
• [Profitability]
• [Revenue and expenses]
• [Latitude and longitude]
• [Product type]

 TFX (TensorFlow Extended) is a platform for end-to-end machine learning pipelines. It provides components for data ingestion, preprocessing, validation, model training, serving, and monitoring. Dataflow is a fully managed service for scalable data processing. By using TFX components with Dataflow, you can perform feature engineering on large-scale tabular data in a distributed and efficient way. You can use the Transform component to apply the MaxMin scaler and the one-hot encoding to the numerical and categorical features, respectively. You can also use the ExampleGen component to read data from BigQuery and the Trainer component to train your TensorFlow model. The output of the Transform component is a TFRecord file, which is a binary format for storing TensorFlow data. You can export the TFRecord file to Cloud Storage and feed it into Vertex AI Training, which is a managed service for training custom machine learning models on Google Cloud. References:

• TFX | TensorFlow
• Dataflow | Google Cloud
• Vertex AI Training | Google Cloud

A Dataflow streaming pipeline is a cost-effective way to process large volumes of real-time data from sensors. The RunInference API is a Dataflow transform that allows you to run online predictions on your streaming data using your ML models. By using the RunInference API, you can avoid the latency and cost of using a separate prediction service. The automatic model refresh feature enables you to update your models in the pipeline without redeploying the pipeline. This way, you can ensure that your models are always up-to-date and accurate. By deploying a Dataflow streaming pipeline with the RunInference API and using automatic model refresh, you can achieve sub-millisecond predictions, 24/7 availability, and low operational overhead for your ML models. References:

• Dataflow documentation
• RunInference API documentation
• Automatic model refresh documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

The best option for developing and comparing multiple models on a large-scale BigQuery table using TensorFlow and Vertex AI is to use TensorFlow I/O’s BigQuery Reader to directly read the data. This option has the following advantages:

• It minimizes any bottlenecks during the data ingestion stage, as the BigQuery Reader can stream data from BigQuery to TensorFlow in parallel and in batches, without loading the entire table into memory or disk. The BigQuery Reader can also perform data transformations and filtering using SQL queries, reducing the need for additional preprocessing steps in TensorFlow.
• It leverages the scalability and performance of BigQuery, as the BigQuery Reader can handle hundreds of millions of records worth of training data efficiently and reliably. BigQuery is a serverless, fully managed, and highly scalable data warehouse that can run complex queries over petabytes of data in seconds.
• It simplifies the integration with Vertex AI, as the BigQuery Reader can be used with both custom and pre-built TensorFlow models on Vertex AI. Vertex AI is a unified platform for machine learning that provides various tools and features for data ingestion, data labeling, data preprocessing, model training, model tuning, model deployment, model monitoring, and model explainability.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

• Option A: Using the BigQuery client library to load data into a dataframe, and using tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices() to read it, introduces memory and performance issues. This option requires loading the entire BigQuery table into a Pandas dataframe, which can consume a lot of memory and cause out-of-memory errors. Moreover, using tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices() to read the dataframe can be slow and inefficient, as it creates one slice per row of the dataframe, resulting in a large number of small tensors.
• Option B: Exporting data to CSV files in Cloud Storage, and using tf.data.TextLineDataset() to read them, introduces additional steps and complexity. This option requires exporting the BigQuery table to one or more CSV files in Cloud Storage, which can take a long time and consume a lot of storage space. Moreover, using tf.data.TextLineDataset() to read the CSV files can be slow and error-prone, as it requires parsing and decoding each line of text, handling missing values and invalid data, and applying data transformations and validations.
• Option C: Converting the data into TFRecords, and using tf.data.TFRecordDataset() to read them, introduces additional steps and complexity. This option requires converting the BigQuery table into one or more TFRecord files, which are binary files that store serialized TensorFlow examples. This can take a long time and consume a lot of storage space. Moreover, using tf.data.TFRecordDataset() to read the TFRecord files requires defining and parsing the schema of the TensorFlow examples, which can be tedious and error-prone.

References:

• [TensorFlow I/O documentation]
• [BigQuery documentation]
• [Vertex AI documentation]

 The best option for creating and orchestrating an end-to-end training pipeline for a TensorFlow model is to use TensorFlow Extended (TFX) and standard TFX components, and deploy the pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines. TFX is an end-to-end platform for deploying production ML pipelines, which consists of several built-in components that cover the entire ML lifecycle, from data ingestion and validation, to model training and evaluation, to model deployment and monitoring. TFX also supports custom components and integrations with other Google Cloud services, such as BigQuery, Dataflow, and Cloud Storage. Vertex AI Pipelines is a fully managed service that allows you to run TFX pipelines on Google Cloud, without having to worry about infrastructure provisioning, scaling, or maintenance. Vertex AI Pipelines also provides a user-friendly interface to monitor and manage your pipelines, as well as tools to track and compare experiments. The other options are not as suitable for creating and orchestrating an end-to-end training pipeline for a TensorFlow model, because:

• Creating the pipeline using Kubeflow Pipelines domain-specific language (DSL) and predefined Google Cloud components would require more development time and effort, as Kubeflow Pipelines DSL is not as expressive or compatible with TensorFlow as TFX. Predefined Google Cloud components might not cover all the stages of the ML lifecycle, and might not be optimized for TensorFlow models.
• Orchestrating the pipeline using Kubeflow Pipelines deployed on Google Kubernetes Engine would require more infrastructure maintenance, as Kubeflow Pipelines is not a fully managed service, and you would have to provision and manage your own Kubernetes cluster. This would also incur more costs, as you would have to pay for the cluster resources, regardless of the pipeline usage. References:
• TFX | ML Production Pipelines | TensorFlow
• Vertex AI Pipelines | Google Cloud
• Kubeflow Pipelines | Google Cloud
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certification
• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

The best option to stabilize the pipeline without downgrading the evaluation quality while minimizing infrastructure overhead is to use Dataflow as the runner for the evaluation step. Dataflow is a fully managed service for executing Apache Beam pipelines that can scale up and down according to the workload. Dataflow can handle large-scale, distributed data processing tasks such as model evaluation, and it can also integrate with Vertex AI Pipelines and TensorFlow Extended (TFX). By using the flag -runner=DataflowRunner in beam_pipeline_args, you can instruct the Evaluator component to run the evaluation step on Dataflow, instead of using the default DirectRunner, which runs locally and may cause out-of-memory errors. Option A is incorrect because adding tfma.MetricsSpec() to limit the number of metrics in the evaluation step may downgrade the evaluation quality, as some important metrics may be omitted. Moreover, reducing the number of metrics may not solve the out-of-memory error, as the evaluation step may still consume a lot of memory depending on the size and complexity of the data and the model. Option B is incorrect because migrating the pipeline to Kubeflow hosted on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) may increase the infrastructure overhead, as you need to provision, manage, and monitor the GKE cluster yourself. Moreover, you need to specify the appropriate node parameters for the evaluation step, which may require trial and error to find the optimal configuration. Option D is incorrect because moving the evaluation step out of the pipeline and running it on custom Compute Engine VMs may also increase the infrastructure overhead, as you need to create, configure, and delete the VMs yourself. Moreover, you need to ensure that the VMs have sufficient memory for the evaluation step, which may require trial and error to find the optimal machine type. References:

• Dataflow documentation
• Using DataflowRunner
• Evaluator component documentation
• Configuring the Evaluator component

According to the web search results, the TFRecord format is a recommended way to store large amounts of data efficiently and improve the performance of the data input pipeline123. The TFRecord format is a binary format that can be compressed and serialized, which reduces the I/O overhead and the memory footprint of the data1. The tf.data API provides tools to create and read TFRecord files easily1.

The other options are not as effective as option A. Option B would reduce the amount of data available for training and might affect the model accuracy. Option C would still require reading from a single CSV file at a time, which might not utilize the full bandwidth of the remote storage. Option D would only affect the order of the data elements, not the speed of reading them.

 XGBoost is a popular open-source library that provides a scalable and efficient implementation of gradient boosted trees. You can use XGBoost to train a classification or regression model on tabular data. You can also use Vertex AI to productionize the model and expose it for internal use as an HTTP microservice. Vertex AI is a service that allows you to create and train ML models using Google Cloud technologies. You can use a prebuilt XGBoost Vertex container to create a model and deploy it to Vertex AI Endpoints. A prebuilt Vertex container is a container image that contains the dependencies and libraries needed to run a specific ML framework, such as XGBoost. You can use a prebuilt Vertex container to simplify the model creation and deployment process, without having to build your own custom container. Vertex AI Endpoints is a service that allows you to serve your ML models online and scale them automatically. You can use Vertex AI Endpoints to deploy the model from the prebuilt Vertex container and expose it as an HTTP microservice. You can also configure the endpoint to handle a small number of incoming requests, and optimize the latency and cost of serving the model. By using a prebuilt XGBoost Vertex container and Vertex AI Endpoints, you can productionize the model with the least amount of effort and latency. References:

• XGBoost documentation
• Vertex AI documentation
• Prebuilt Vertex container documentation
• Vertex AI Endpoints documentation
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

To avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias in the model, you should collect a representative sample of production traffic to build the training dataset, and conduct fairness tests across sensitive categories and demographics on the trained model. A representative sample is one that reflects the true distribution of the population, and does not over- or under-represent any group. A random sample is a simple way to obtain a representative sample, as it ensures that every data point has an equal chance of being selected. A stratified sample is another way to obtain a representative sample, as it ensures that every subgroup has a proportional representation in the sample. However, a stratified sample requires prior knowledge of the subgroups and their sizes, which may not be available or easy to obtain. Therefore, a random sample is a more feasible option in this case. A fairness test is a way to measure and evaluate the potential bias and discrimination of the model, based on different categories and demographics, such as age, gender, race, etc. A fairness test can help you identify and mitigate any unfair outcomes or impacts of the model, and ensure that the model treats all groups fairly and equitably. A fairness test can be conducted using various methods and tools, such as confusion matrices, ROC curves, fairness indicators, etc. References: The answer can be verified from official Google Cloud documentation and resources related to data sampling and fairness testing.

• Sampling data | BigQuery
• Fairness Indicators | TensorFlow
• What-if Tool | TensorFlow

 Before building an insurance approval model, an ML engineer should consider the factors of traceability, reproducibility, and explainability, as these are important aspects of responsible AI and fairness in a regulated domain. Traceability is the ability to track the provenance and lineage of the data, models, and decisions throughout the ML lifecycle. It helps to ensure the quality, reliability, and accountability of the ML system, and to comply with the regulatory and ethical standards. Reproducibility is the ability to recreate the same results and outcomes using the same data, models, and parameters. It helps to verify the validity, consistency, and robustness of the ML system, and to debug and improve the performance. Explainability is the ability to understand and interpret the logic, behavior, and outcomes of the ML system. It helps to increase the transparency, trust, and confidence of the ML system, and to identify and mitigate any potential biases, errors, or risks. The other options are not as relevant or comprehensive as this option. Redaction is the process of removing sensitive or confidential information from the data or documents, but it is not a factor that the ML engineer should consider before building the model, as it is more related to the data preparation and protection. Federated learning is a technique that allows training ML models on decentralized data without transferring the data to a central server, but it is not a factor that the ML engineer should consider before building the model, as it is more related to the model architecture and privacy preservation. Differential privacy is a method that adds noise to the data or the model outputs to protect the individual privacy of the data subjects, but it is not a factor that the ML engineer should consider before building the model, as it is more related to the model evaluation and deployment. References:

• Responsible AI documentation
• Traceability documentation
• Reproducibility documentation
• Explainability documentation

According to the web search results, TensorFlow Extended (TFX) is a platform for building end-to-end machine learning pipelines using TensorFlow1. 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 Dataflow2 and Vertex AI3. Dataflow 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. Vertex AI is a unified platform for machine learning development and deployment. Vertex AI offers various services and tools for building, managing, and serving machine learning models. Therefore, option D is the best way to create a low maintenance, automated workflow for the given use case, as it allows you to use the TFX SDK to define and execute your pipeline components, and use Dataflow and Vertex AI services to scale and optimize your pipeline. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• TensorFlow Extended
• Dataflow
• Vertex AI
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

The best hardware to choose for your models is a cluster with 2 a2-megagpu-16g machines, each with 16 NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs (640 GB GPU memory in total), 96 vCPUs, and 1.4 TB RAM. This hardware configuration can provide you with enough compute power, memory, and bandwidth to handle your large and complex deep learning models, as well as your custom TensorFlow ops in C++. The NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs are the latest and most advanced GPUs from NVIDIA, which offer high performance, scalability, and efficiency for various ML workloads. They also support multi-instance GPU (MIG) technology, which allows you to partition each GPU into up to seven smaller instances, each with its own memory, cache, and compute cores. This can enable you to run multiple experiments in parallel, or to optimize the resource utilization and cost efficiency of your models. The a2-megagpu-16g machines are part of the Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family, which are designed to provide the best performance and flexibility for GPU-intensive applications. They also offer high-speed NVLink interconnects between the GPUs, which can improve the data transfer and communication between the GPUs. Moreover, the a2-megagpu-16g machines have 96 vCPUs and 1.4 TB RAM, which can support the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

The other options are not optimal for the following reasons:

• A. A cluster with 2 n1-highcpu-64 machines, each with 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs (128 GB GPU memory in total), and a n1-highcpu-64 machine with 64 vCPUs and 58 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs are the previous generation of GPUs from NVIDIA, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs. They also do not support the MIG technology, which can limit the flexibility and optimization of your models. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.
• C. A cluster with an n1-highcpu-64 machine with a v2-8 TPU and 64 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The v2-8 TPU is a cloud tensor processing unit (TPU) device, which is a custom ASIC chip designed by Google to accelerate ML workloads. However, the v2-8 TPU is the second generation of TPUs, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the latest v3-8 TPUs. They also have less memory and bandwidth than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs, which can limit the size and complexity of your models, as well as the data transfer and communication between the devices. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machine has lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.
• D. A cluster with 4 n1-highcpu-96 machines, each with 96 vCPUs and 86 GB RAM is not a good option, as it does not have any GPUs, which are essential for accelerating deep learning models. The n1-highcpu-96 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate
• Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification
• NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPU
• Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family
• Google Cloud N1 VM family
• Cloud TPU

 Vertex AI Experiments is a managed service that allows you to track, compare, and manage experiments with Vertex AI. You can use Vertex AI Experiments to record the parameters, metrics, and artifacts of each pipeline run, and compare them in a graphical interface. Vertex AI TensorBoard is a tool that lets you visualize the metrics of your models, such as accuracy, loss, and learning curves. By logging metrics to Vertex ML Metadata and using Vertex AI Experiments and TensorBoard, you can easily collaborate with your team and find the best model configuration for your problem. References: Vertex AI Pipelines: Metrics visualization and run comparison using the KFP SDK, Track, compare, manage experiments with Vertex AI Experiments, Vertex AI Pipelines

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

• Option A is incorrect because using AI Platform to run distributed training jobs with checkpoints does not reduce the compute costs, but rather increases them by using more resources and storing the checkpoints.
• Option B is incorrect because using AI Platform to run distributed training jobs without checkpoints may reduce the compute costs, but it also risks losing the progress of the training if the job fails or is interrupted.
• Option C is correct because migrating to training with Kubeflow on Google Kubernetes Engine, and using preemptible VMs with checkpoints can reduce the compute costs significantly by using cheaper and more scalable resources, while also preserving the state of the training with checkpoints.
• Option D is incorrect because using preemptible VMs without checkpoints may reduce the compute costs, but it also risks losing the training progress if the VMs are preempted.

References:

• Kubeflow on Google Cloud
• Using preemptible VMs and GPUs
• Saving and loading models

According to the web search results, Cloud Build1 is a service that executes your builds on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. Cloud Build can import source code from Cloud Source Repositories2, Cloud Storage, GitHub, Bitbucket, or any publicly hosted Git repository. Cloud Build allows you to create and manage build triggers, which are automated workflows that run whenever a code change is pushed to your source repository. You can use Cloud Build triggers to automatically retrain your ML models whenever there is any modification of the code. Therefore, option B is the best way to set up the CI pipeline for the given use case, as it allows you to configure a Cloud Build trigger with the event set as “Push to a branch”, which means the trigger will run whenever a new commit is pushed to a specific branch of your source repository. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Cloud Build
• Cloud Source Repositories
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

• Reasoning: The question asks for a design that serves asynchronous predictions to determine whether a machine part will fail. This means that the predictions do not need to be returned immediately to the sensors, but can be processed in batches and sent to a downstream system for monitoring. Option B is the only one that uses a streaming data pipeline with Pub/Sub and Dataflow, which can handle real-time data ingestion, processing, and prediction. Option B also invokes the model for prediction, which is required by the question. The other options either use synchronous predictions (option A), batch predictions (options C and D), or do not invoke the model for prediction (option D).
• References: You can learn more about the differences between synchronous, asynchronous, and batch predictions in Vertex AI from this document. You can also find examples of how to use Pub/Sub and Dataflow for streaming data pipelines from this tutorial and this codelab.

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

 Deploying a model to an endpoint in Vertex AI associates physical resources with the model so it can serve online predictions with low latency1. By configuring the model deployment settings to use an n1-standard-4 machine type and setting the minReplicaCount value to 1 and the maxReplicaCount value to 8, you can ensure that the model scales according to the traffic, thereby minimizing latency and cost1. The n1-standard-4 machine type provides a balance between computing power and cost, and the dynamic scaling allows the model to handle higher traffic during nights and weekends without incurring unnecessary costs during off-peak times

 Transfer learning is a technique that leverages the knowledge and weights of a pre-trained model and adapts them to a new task or domain1. Transfer learning can save time and resources by avoiding training a model from scratch, and can also improve the performance and generalization of the model by using a larger and more diverse dataset2. AI Platform provides several established text classification models that can be used for transfer learning, such as BERT, ALBERT, or XLNet3. These models are based on state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques and can handle various text classification tasks, such as sentiment analysis, topic classification, or spam detection4. By using one of these models on AI Platform, you can customize the model’s code, serving, and deployment, and use Kubeflow pipelines for the ML platform. Therefore, using an established text classification model on AI Platform to perform transfer learning is the best option for this use case.

References:

• Transfer Learning - Machine Learning’s Next Frontier
• A Comprehensive Hands-on Guide to Transfer Learning with Real-World Applications in Deep Learning
• Text classification models
• Text Classification with Pre-trained Models in TensorFlow

Developing ML models with AI Platform for image segmentation on CT scans requires a lot of computation and experimentation, as image segmentation is a complex and challenging task that involves assigning a label to each pixel in an image. Image segmentation can be used for various medical applications, such as tumor detection, organ segmentation, or lesion localization1

To minimize the computation costs and manual intervention while having version control for the code, one should use Cloud Build linked with Cloud Source Repositories to trigger retraining when new code is pushed to the repository. 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 archives2

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 path3

Cloud Source Repositories is a service that provides fully managed private Git repositories on Google Cloud Platform. Cloud Source Repositories allows you to store, manage, and track your code using the Git version control system. You can also use Cloud Source Repositories to connect to other Google Cloud services, such as Cloud Build, Cloud Functions, or Cloud Run4

To use Cloud Build linked with Cloud Source Repositories to trigger retraining when new code is pushed to the repository, you need to do the following steps:

• Create a Cloud Source Repository for your code, and push your code to the repository. You can use the Cloud SDK, Cloud Console, or Cloud Source Repositories API to create and manage your repository5
• Create a Cloud Build trigger for your repository, and specify the build configuration and the trigger settings. You can use the Cloud SDK, Cloud Console, or Cloud Build API to create and manage your trigger.
• Specify the steps of the build in a YAML or JSON file, such as installing the dependencies, running the tests, building the container image, and submitting the training job to AI Platform. You can also use the Cloud Build predefined or custom build steps to simplify your build configuration.
• Push your new code to the repository, and the trigger will start the build automatically. You can monitor the status and logs of the build using the Cloud SDK, Cloud Console, or Cloud Build API.

The other options are not as easy or feasible. Using Cloud Functions to identify changes to your code in Cloud Storage and trigger a retraining job 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 builds. Using the gcloud command-line tool to submit training jobs on AI Platform when you update your code is not optimal, as it requires manual intervention and does not leverage the benefits of Cloud Build and its integration with Cloud Source Repositories. Creating an automated workflow in Cloud Composer that runs daily and looks for changes in code in Cloud Storage using a sensor is not relevant, as Cloud Composer is mainly designed for orchestrating complex workflows across multiple systems, and does not provide a version control system for your code.

References: 1: Image segmentation 2: Cloud Build overview 3: Creating and managing build triggers 4: Cloud Source Repositories overview 5: Quickstart: Create a repository : [Quickstart: Create a build trigger] : [Configuring builds] : [Viewing build results]

The best option for deploying a scikit-learn model on Vertex AI with minimal additional code is to wrap the model in a custom prediction routine (CPR) and build a container image from the CPR local model. Upload your scikit-learn model container to Vertex AI Model Registry. Deploy your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and create a Vertex AI batch prediction job. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Google Cloud to deploy and serve a scikit-learn model that supports both online and batch prediction. Vertex AI is a unified platform for building and deploying machine learning solutions on Google Cloud. Vertex AI can deploy a trained scikit-learn model to an online prediction endpoint, which can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. Vertex AI can also create a batch prediction job, which can provide high-throughput predictions for a large batch of 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 additional code, as you only need to write a few functions to implement the prediction logic. 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 wrapping the model in a CPR and building a container image from the CPR local model, uploading the scikit-learn model container to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job, you can deploy a scikit-learn model on Vertex AI with minimal additional code1.

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

• Option A: Uploading your model to the Vertex AI Model Registry by using a prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container, deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job that uses the instanceConfig.instanceType setting to transform your input data would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, and could cause errors or poor performance. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container is a container image that is provided by Google Cloud, and contains the scikit-learn framework and the dependencies. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container can help you deploy a scikit-learn model without writing any code, but it also limits your customization options. A prebuilt scikit-learn prediction 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 prebuilt scikit-learn prediction container. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting is a parameter that determines the machine type and the accelerator type for the batch prediction job. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting can help you optimize the performance and the cost of the batch prediction job, but it cannot help you transform your input data2.
• Option C: Creating a custom container for your scikit-learn model, defining a custom serving function for your model, uploading your model and custom container to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. A custom container is a container image that contains the model, the dependencies, and a web server. A custom container can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. A custom serving function is a Python function that defines the logic for running the prediction on the model. A custom serving function can help you implement the prediction logic of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. However, creating a custom container and defining a custom serving function would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. You would need to write code, build and test the container image, configure the web server, and implement the prediction logic. Moreover, creating a custom container and defining a custom serving function would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, as the custom serving function only runs the prediction on the model3.
• Option D: Creating a custom container for your scikit-learn model, uploading your model and custom container to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying your model to Vertex AI Endpoints, and creating a Vertex AI batch prediction job that uses the instanceConfig.instanceType setting to transform your input data would not allow you to preprocess the input data for model inference, and could cause errors or poor performance. A custom container is a container image that contains the model, the dependencies, and a web server. A custom container can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. However, creating a custom container would require more skills and steps than using a CPR and a container image. You would need to write code, build and test the container image, and configure the web server. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting is a parameter that determines the machine type and the accelerator type for the batch prediction job. The instanceConfig.instanceType setting can help you optimize the performance and the cost of the batch prediction job, but it cannot help you transform your input data23.

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

 Kubeflow is an open source platform for developing, orchestrating, deploying, and running scalable and portable machine learning workflows on Kubernetes. Kubeflow Pipelines is a component of Kubeflow that allows you to build and manage end-to-end machine learning pipelines using a graphical user interface or a Python-based domain-specific language (DSL). Kubeflow Pipelines can help you automate and orchestrate your machine learning workflows, and integrate with various Google Cloud services and tools1

One of the Google Cloud services that you can use with Kubeflow Pipelines is BigQuery, which is a serverless, scalable, and cost-effective data warehouse that allows you to run fast and complex queries on large-scale data. BigQuery can help you analyze and prepare your data for machine learning, and store and manage your machine learning models2

To execute a query against BigQuery as the first step in your Kubeflow pipeline, and use the results of that query as the input to the next step in your pipeline, the easiest way to do that is to use the BigQuery Query Component, which is a pre-built component that you can find in the Kubeflow Pipelines repository on GitHub. The BigQuery Query Component allows you to run a SQL query on BigQuery, and output the results as a table or a file. You can use the component’s URL to load the component into your pipeline, and specify the query and the output parameters. You can then use the output of the component as the input to the next step in your pipeline, such as a data processing or a model training step3

The other options are not as easy or feasible. Using the BigQuery console to execute your query and then save the query results into a new BigQuery table is not a good idea, as it does not integrate with your Kubeflow pipeline, and requires manual intervention and duplication of data. Writing a Python script that uses the BigQuery API to execute queries against BigQuery is not ideal, as it requires writing custom code and handling authentication and error handling. Using the Kubeflow Pipelines DSL to create a custom component that uses the Python BigQuery client library to execute queries is not optimal, as it requires creating and packaging a Docker container image for the component, and testing and debugging the component.

References: 1: Kubeflow Pipelines overview 2: BigQuery overview 3: BigQuery Query Component

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “explain the predictions of a trained model”. Vertex AI provides feature attributions using Shapley Values, a cooperative game theory algorithm that assigns credit to each feature in a model for a particular outcome2. Feature attributions can help you understand how the model calculates the predictions and debug or optimize the model accordingly. You can use Forecasting with AutoML or Tabular Workflow for Forecasting to generate and query local feature attributions2. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

• Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide
• Feature attributions for forecasting
• Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023
• Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

To create a Vertex AI Workbench environment for your team and limit access to other employees in your project, you should follow these steps:

• Create a new service account and grant it the Vertex AI User role. This role grants full access to all resources in Vertex AI, including creating and managing notebook instances1.
• Grant the Service Account User role to each team member on the service account. This role allows the team members to impersonate the service account and use its permissions2.
• Grant the Notebook Viewer role to each team member. This role allows the team members to view and connect to the notebook instance, but not to modify or delete it3.
• Provision a Vertex AI Workbench user-managed notebook instance that uses the new service account. This way, the notebook instance will run as the service account and only the team members who have the Service Account User and Notebook Viewer roles will be able to access it.

References:

• 1: Vertex AI access control with IAM | Google Cloud
• 2: Understanding service accounts | Cloud IAM Documentation
• 3: Manage access to a Vertex AI Workbench instance | Google Cloud
• [4]: Create and manage Vertex AI Workbench instances | Google Cloud

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

BigQuery is a serverless, scalable, and cost-effective data warehouse that allows users to run SQL queries on large volumes of data. BigQuery Load is a tool that can ingest data from Cloud Storage into BigQuery tables. BigQuery SQL is a dialect of SQL that supports many of the same functions and operations as PySpark, such as window functions, aggregate functions, joins, and subqueries. By using BigQuery Load and BigQuery SQL, you can rebuild your ML pipeline for structured data on Google Cloud without having to manage any servers or clusters, and with faster performance and lower cost than using PySpark on Dataproc. You can also use BigQuery ML to create and evaluate ML models using SQL commands. References:

• BigQuery documentation
• BigQuery Load documentation
• BigQuery SQL reference
• BigQuery ML documentation

The best option for deploying a new version of a model to a production Vertex AI endpoint that is serving traffic, directing all user traffic to the new model, and deploying the model with minimal disruption to your application, is to create a new model, set the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the new model to the existing endpoint, and set the new model to 100% of the traffic. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex AI to update your model version and serve online predictions with low latency. 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. 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 have different parameters, code, or data than another version of the same model. A model version can help you experiment and iterate on your model, and improve the model performance and accuracy. A parentModel parameter is a parameter that specifies the model ID of the model that the new model version is based on. A parentModel parameter can help you inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and avoid duplicating the model configuration. 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 models, and track the model versions and metadata. 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 creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic, you can deploy a new version of a model to a production Vertex AI endpoint that is serving traffic, direct all user traffic to the new model, and deploy the model with minimal disruption to your application1.

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

• Option A: Creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the new endpoint, and updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. Cloud DNS is a service that can provide reliable and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) services on Google Cloud. Cloud DNS can help you manage your DNS records, and resolve domain names to IP addresses. By updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint, you can redirect the user traffic to the new endpoint, and avoid breaking the existing application. However, creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the new endpoint, and updating Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. You would need to write code, create and configure the new endpoint, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploy the model to the new endpoint, and update Cloud DNS to point to the new endpoint. Moreover, this option would create a new endpoint, which can increase the maintenance and management costs2.
• Option B: Creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the new endpoint and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. A parentModel parameter is a parameter that specifies the model ID of the model that the new model version is based on. A parentModel parameter can help you inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and avoid duplicating the model configuration. A default version is a model version that is used for prediction when no other version is specified. A default version can help you simplify the prediction request, and avoid specifying the model version every time. By setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, you can create a new model that is based on the existing model, and use it for prediction without specifying the model version. However, creating a new endpoint, creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model and setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the new endpoint and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic would require more skills and steps than creating a new model, setting the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, deploying the new model to the existing endpoint, and setting the new model to 100% of the traffic. You would need to write code, create and configure the new endpoint, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy the model to the new endpoint. Moreover, this option would create a new endpoint, which can increase the maintenance and management costs2.
• Option D: Creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the existing endpoint would not allow you to inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and could cause errors or poor performance. A default version is a model version that is used for prediction when no other version is specified. A default version can help you simplify the prediction request, and avoid specifying the model version every time. By setting the new model as the default version, you can use the new model for prediction without specifying the model version. However, creating a new model, setting it as the default version, uploading the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploying the new model to the existing endpoint would not allow you to inherit the settings and metadata of the existing model, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and configure the new model, upload the model to Vertex AI Model Registry, and deploy the model to the existing endpoint. Moreover, this option would not set the parentModel parameter to the model ID of the currently deployed model, which could prevent you from inheriting the settings and metadata of the existing model, and cause inconsistencies or conflicts between the model versions2.

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
• Vertex AI
• Cloud DNS

 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

 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]