Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Practice Test

Answer : D

The best option for determining how often to retrain your model to maintain a high level of performance while minimizing cost is to run training-serving skew detection batch jobs every few days. Training-serving skew refers to the discrepancy between the distributions of the features in the training dataset and the serving data. This can cause the model to perform poorly on the new data, as it is not representative of the data that the model was trained on. By running training-serving skew detection batch jobs, you can monitor the changes in the feature distributions over time, and identify when the skew becomes significant enough to affect the model performance. If skew is detected, you can send the most recent serving data to the labeling service, and use the labeled data to retrain your model. This option has the following benefits:

It allows you to retrain your model only when necessary, based on the actual data changes, rather than on a fixed schedule or a heuristic. This can save you the cost of the labeling service and the retraining process, and also avoid overfitting or underfitting your model.

It leverages the existing tools and frameworks for training-serving skew detection, such as TensorFlow Data Validation (TFDV) and Vertex Data Labeling. TFDV is a library that can compute and visualize descriptive statistics for your datasets, and compare the statistics across different datasets. Vertex Data Labeling is a service that can label your data with high quality and low latency, using either human labelers or automated labelers.

It integrates well with the MLOps practices, such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), which can automate the workflow of running the skew detection jobs, sending the data to the labeling service, retraining the model, and deploying the new model version.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

Option A: Training an anomaly detection model on the training dataset, and running all incoming requests through this model, introduces additional complexity and overhead. This option requires building and maintaining a separate model for anomaly detection, which can be challenging and time-consuming. Moreover, this option requires running the anomaly detection model on every request, which can increase the latency and resource consumption of the prediction service. Additionally, this option may not capture the subtle changes in the feature distributions that can affect the model performance, as anomalies are usually defined as rare or extreme events.

Option B: Identifying temporal patterns in your model's performance over the previous year, and creating a schedule for sending serving data to the labeling service for the next year, introduces additional assumptions and risks. This option requires analyzing the historical data and model performance, and finding the patterns that can explain the variations in the model performance over time. However, this can be difficult and unreliable, as the patterns may not be consistent or predictable, and may depend on various factors that are not captured by the data. Moreover, this option requires creating a schedule based on the past patterns, which may not reflect the future changes in the data or the environment. This can lead to either sending too much or too little data to the labeling service, resulting in either wasted cost or degraded performance.

Option C: Comparing the cost of the labeling service with the lost revenue due to model performance degradation over the past year, and adjusting the frequency of model retraining accordingly, introduces additional challenges and trade-offs. This option requires estimating the cost of the labeling service and the lost revenue due to model performance degradation, which can be difficult and inaccurate, as they may depend on various factors that are not easily quantifiable or measurable. Moreover, this option requires finding the optimal balance between the cost and the performance, which can be subjective and variable, as different stakeholders may have different preferences and expectations. Furthermore, this option may not account for the potential impact of the model performance degradation on other aspects of the business, such as customer satisfaction, retention, or loyalty.

Answer : D

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.

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

Answer : A

Option A is correct because using local feature importance from the predictions is the best way to provide the reasons that contributed to the model's decision for a specific customer's loan request.Local feature importance is a measure of how much each feature affects the prediction for a given instance, relative to the average prediction for the dataset1.AutoML Tables provides local feature importance values for each prediction, which can be accessed using the Vertex AI SDK for Python or the Cloud Console2. By using local feature importance, you can explain why the model rejected the loan request based on the customer's data.

Option B is incorrect because using the correlation with target values in the data summary page is not a good way to provide the reasons that contributed to the model's decision for a specific customer's loan request.The correlation with target values is a measure of how much each feature is linearly related to the target variable for the entire dataset, not for a single instance3.The data summary page in AutoML Tables shows the correlation with target values for each feature, as well as other statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and histogram4. However, these statistics are not useful for explaining the model's decision for a specific customer, as they do not account for the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model.

Option C is incorrect because using the feature importance percentages in the model evaluation page is not a good way to provide the reasons that contributed to the model's decision for a specific customer's loan request.The feature importance percentages are a measure of how much each feature affects the overall accuracy of the model for the entire dataset, not for a single instance5. The model evaluation page in AutoML Tables shows the feature importance percentages for each feature, as well as other metrics such as precision, recall, and confusion matrix. However, these metrics are not useful for explaining the model's decision for a specific customer, as they do not reflect the individual contribution of each feature for a given prediction.

Option D is incorrect because varying features independently to identify the threshold per feature that changes the classification is not a feasible way to provide the reasons that contributed to the model's decision for a specific customer's loan request. This method involves changing the value of one feature at a time, while keeping the other features constant, and observing how the prediction changes. However, this method is not practical, as it requires making multiple prediction requests, and may not capture the interactions between features or the non-linearity of the model.

Local feature importance

Getting local feature importance values

Correlation with target values

Data summary page

Feature importance percentages

[Model evaluation page]

[Varying features independently]

Answer : B

Option A is incorrect because Vertex AI Pipelines and App Engine do not meet all the requirements of the system.Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that allows you to create, run, and manage ML workflows using TensorFlow Extended (TFX) components or custom components1.App Engine is a service that allows you to build and deploy scalable web applications using standard or flexible environments2.However, App Engine does not support Docker containers in the standard environment, and does not provide a dedicated service for online prediction and monitoring of ML models3.

Option B is correct because Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Prediction, and Vertex AI Model Monitoring meet all the requirements of the system.Vertex AI Prediction is a service that allows you to deploy and serve ML models for online or batch prediction, with support for autoscaling and custom containers4.Vertex AI Model Monitoring is a service that allows you to monitor the performance and fairness of your deployed models, and get alerts for any issues or anomalies5.

Option C is incorrect because Cloud Composer, BigQuery ML, and Vertex AI Prediction do not meet all the requirements of the system. Cloud Composer is a service that allows you to create, schedule, and manage workflows using Apache Airflow. BigQuery ML is a service that allows you to create and use ML models within BigQuery using SQL queries. However, BigQuery ML does not support custom containers, and Vertex AI Prediction does not support scheduled model retraining or model monitoring.

Option D is incorrect because Cloud Composer, Vertex AI Training with custom containers, and App Engine do not meet all the requirements of the system. Vertex AI Training is a service that allows you to train ML models using built-in algorithms or custom containers.However, Vertex AI Training does not support online prediction or model monitoring, and App Engine does not support Docker containers in the standard environment or online prediction and monitoring of ML models3.

Vertex AI Pipelines overview

App Engine overview

Choosing an App Engine environment

Vertex AI Prediction overview

Vertex AI Model Monitoring overview

[Cloud Composer overview]

[BigQuery ML overview]

[BigQuery ML limitations]

[Vertex AI Training overview]

Answer : D

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''.TensorFlow Transform2is a library for preprocessing data with TensorFlow. TensorFlow Transform enables you to define and execute distributed pre-processing or feature engineering functions on large data sets, and then export the same functions as a TensorFlow graph for re-use during training or serving. TensorFlow Transform can handle both instance-level and full-pass data transformations.Apache Beam3is an open source framework for building scalable and portable data pipelines. Apache Beam supports both batch and streaming data processing.Dataflow4is a fully managed service for running Apache Beam pipelines on Google Cloud. Dataflow handles the provisioning and management of the compute resources, as well as the optimization and execution of the pipelines. Therefore, option D is the best way to configure the preprocessing routine for the given use case, as it allows you to use the same preprocessing logic during model training and serving, and leverage the scalability and performance of Dataflow. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario.Reference:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

TensorFlow Transform

Apache Beam

Dataflow

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

Answer : B

The best option for deploying a scikit-learn classification model to production is to deploy an online Vertex AI prediction endpoint and set the max replica count to 100. This option allows you to leverage the power and scalability of Google Cloud to serve requests 24/7 and handle millions of requests per second. 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. An online prediction endpoint consists of one or more replicas, which are copies of the model that run on virtual machines. The max replica count is a parameter that determines the maximum number of replicas that can be created for the endpoint. By setting the max replica count to 100, you can enable the endpoint to scale up to 100 replicas when the traffic increases, and scale down to zero replicas when the traffic decreases. This can help minimize the cost of deployment, as you only pay for the resources that you use.Moreover, you can use the autoscaling algorithm option to optimize the scaling behavior of the endpoint based on the latency and utilization metrics1.

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

Option A: Deploying an online Vertex AI prediction endpoint and setting the max replica count to 1 would not be able to serve requests 24/7 and handle millions of requests per second. Setting the max replica count to 1 would limit the endpoint to only one replica, which can cause performance issues and service disruptions when the traffic increases.Moreover, setting the max replica count to 1 would prevent the endpoint from scaling down to zero replicas when the traffic decreases, which can increase the cost of deployment, as you pay for the resources that you do not use1.

Option C: Deploying an online Vertex AI prediction endpoint with one GPU per replica and setting the max replica count to 1 would not be able to serve requests 24/7 and handle millions of requests per second, and would increase the cost of deployment. Adding a GPU to each replica would increase the computational power of the endpoint, but it would also increase the cost of deployment, as GPUs are more expensive than CPUs.Moreover, setting the max replica count to 1 would limit the endpoint to only one replica, which can cause performance issues and service disruptions when the traffic increases, and prevent the endpoint from scaling down to zero replicas when the traffic decreases1.Furthermore, scikit-learn models do not benefit from GPUs, as scikit-learn is not optimized for GPU acceleration2.

Option D: Deploying an online Vertex AI prediction endpoint with one GPU per replica and setting the max replica count to 100 would be able to serve requests 24/7 and handle millions of requests per second, but it would increase the cost of deployment. Adding a GPU to each replica would increase the computational power of the endpoint, but it would also increase the cost of deployment, as GPUs are more expensive than CPUs. Setting the max replica count to 100 would enable the endpoint to scale up to 100 replicas when the traffic increases, and scale down to zero replicas when the traffic decreases, which can help minimize the cost of deployment.However, scikit-learn models do not benefit from GPUs, as scikit-learn is not optimized for GPU acceleration2. Therefore, using GPUs for scikit-learn models would be unnecessary and wasteful.

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

Online prediction

Scaling online prediction

scikit-learn FAQ

Answer : B

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.

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]