Synopses & Reviews
Summary
Machine Learning in Action is unique book that blends the foundational theories of machine learning with the practical realities of building tools for everyday data analysis. You'll use the flexible Python programming language to build programs that implement algorithms for data classification, forecasting, recommendations, and higher-level features like summarization and simplification. About the Book
A machine is said to learn when its performance improves with experience. Learning requires algorithms and programs that capture data and ferret out the interesting or useful patterns. Once the specialized domain of analysts and mathematicians, machine learning is becoming a skill needed by many.
Machine Learning in Action is a clearly written tutorial for developers. It avoids academic language and takes you straight to the techniques you'll use in your day-to-day work. Many (Python) examples present the core algorithms of statistical data processing, data analysis, and data visualization in code you can reuse. You'll understand the concepts and how they fit in with tactical tasks like classification, forecasting, recommendations, and higher-level features like summarization and simplification.
Readers need no prior experience with machine learning or statistical processing. Familiarity with Python is helpful.
Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book. What's Inside
- A no-nonsense introduction
- Examples showing common ML tasks
- Everyday data analysis
- Implementing classic algorithms like Apriori and Adaboos
Table of ContentsPART 1 CLASSIFICATION
- Machine learning basics
- Classifying with k-Nearest Neighbors
- Splitting datasets one feature at a time: decision trees
- Classifying with probability theory: naïve Bayes
- Logistic regression
- Support vector machines
- Improving classification with the AdaBoost meta algorithm
PART 2 FORECASTING NUMERIC VALUES WITH REGRESSION
- Predicting numeric values: regression
- Tree-based regression
PART 3 UNSUPERVISED LEARNING
- Grouping unlabeled items using k-means clustering
- Association analysis with the Apriori algorithm
- Efficiently finding frequent itemsets with FP-growth
PART 4 ADDITIONAL TOOLS
- Using principal component analysis to simplify data
- Simplifying data with the singular value decomposition
- Big data and MapReduce
Synopsis
The ability to take raw data, access it, filter it, process it, visualize it, understand it, and communicate it to others is possibly the most essential business problem for the coming decades. "Machine learning," the process of automating tasks once considered the domain of highly-trained analysts and mathematicians, is the key to efficiently extracting useful information from this sea of raw data.
Machine Learning in Action is a unique book that blends the foundational theories of machine learning with the practical realities of building tools for everyday data analysis. In it, the author uses the flexible Python programming language to show how to build programs that implement algorithms for data classification, forecasting, recommendations, and higher-level features like summarization and simplification.
About the Author
Peter Harrington holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Electrical Engineering. He worked for Intel Corporation for seven years in California and China. Peter holds four US patents and his work has been published in two academic journals. He is actively involved with research on community detection and runs a software consulting business that focuses on scientific computing solutions.