Before you write a single line of code, every machine learning problem starts with one question: what kind of information do you actually have, and what are you trying to do with it? The answer sorts your problem into one of a small number of categories, and that category determines which entire family of techniques applies. Get this categorization wrong, and you'll waste time forcing the wrong tool at a problem — this is one of the most common mistakes beginners make.
1-A 2-A 3-A 4-A | 5 classification 6 number/value 7 = Supervised classification; unsupervised clustering; reinforcement 8 = Class label vs continuous number 9 = Humans must annotate it accurately | 10 = Robotics control, game AI, ad bidding, recommendation exploration