[Math] How does this notation using theta mean a line or linear function

machine learningnotation

Question:

How does this notation using theta mean a line(ar function)?

Explanation:

I'm taking Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera. He often uses math notation without explaining it. He says…

We're going to represent h as follows. And we will write this as
h (subscript theta) (x) equals theta (subscript one) plus theta (subscript one) of x. (see first green line of right of image below)

enter image description here

"h" above means hypothesis in machine learning but would commonly be called a function in math.

What I am really confused by and hoping for help understanding is …

what does "theta (subscript one) plus theta (subscript one) of x" mean?

how does it represent a line or linear function?

I don't yet understand the correlation.

Best Answer

A more popular form of a straight line would be $$y=mx+c$$

Here $\theta_0$ corresponds to $c$ which is the intercept.

and $\theta_1$ corresponds to $m$ which is the gradient.

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