Rating:
(23 reviews)
Author: Drew Conway
ISBN : 1449303714
New from $28.56
Format: PDF
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If you're an experienced programmer interested in crunching data, this book will get you started with machine learning a toolkit of algorithms that enables computers to train themselves to automate useful tasks. Authors Drew Conway and John Myles White help you understand machine learning and statistics tools through a series of hands-on case studies, instead of a traditional math-heavy presentation. Each chapter focuses on a specific problem in machine learning, such as classification, prediction, optimization, and recommendation. Using the R programming language, you'll learn how to analyze sample datasets and write simple machine learning algorithms. Machine Learning for Hackers is ideal for programmers from any background, including business, government, and academic research. Develop a naive Bayesian classifier to determine if an email is spam, based only on its text Use linear regression to predict the number of page views for the top 1,000 websites Learn optimization techniques by attempting to break a simple letter cipher Compare and contrast U.S. Senators statistically, based on their voting records Build a 'whom to follow' recommendation system from Twitter data
Direct download links available for Free Machine Learning for Hackers [Paperback]
- Paperback: 324 pages
- Publisher: O'Reilly; 1st edition (February 22, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1449303714
- ISBN-13: 978-1449303716
- Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 7.5 x 9.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Machine Learning for Hackers
In Machine Learning for Hackers by Drew Conway and John Myles White, the reader is introduced to a number of techniques useful for creating systems that can understand and make use of data. While the book has solid topical material and is written in a fluid and easy to read manner, I don't feel that this book is really for hackers, unless the definition of hacker is vastly different from "programmer".
Much of the text is taken up explaining how to parse strings, change dates, and otherwise munge data into shape to be operated on by statistical functions provided by R. In fact, there is so much of the book in that fashion that I end up skipping through large portions to get back to something that is worth spending time reading about. I can't understand why a programmer would need significant education in string parsing. I was also put off by the vast amount of text explaining basic statistics. Maybe a recent computer science graduate is simply the wrong reader for this book?
I think it is certainly possible to learn the basic principles of machine hacking from this book, and even to put them to good use with R in the same manner displayed in the examples. Indeed, the code and data available for this book would be very useful as prep for an introductory course at an academic institution. To make the best use of the text, you really should be sitting at your computer, reading the text side by side with the code, and operating on the data with R as instructed to do.
Personally, I found that wading through this text wasn't enjoyable it due to the lack of density of material at the depth I was looking for. Other readers may find it is just right for them, but I suspect those readers would not be hackers, contrary to the implication of the title.
I used this book to teach students about data mining and machine learning with a hands-on approach. I intended it to be used as a book for the students to rely and fall back on. It is not suited well for that purpose.
Pros: The book is affordable and nicely written. The authors take great care in making the book useful and entertaining and one can immediately start putting things into practise. Also, the R examples are interesting and by itself motivating.
Cons: The book has a couple of very grievous errors, that make me wonder the authors understand the subject matter. This is especially striking in the chapters on PCA and Multidimensional Scaling (which I covered in some depth in the class), but also to a lesser degree in other parts of the book that I have read more thoroughly (like optimization and linear and nonlinear regression). Many errors are not typos or simple mistakes but seem to be proof of a profound misunderstanding of concepts by the authors. I am sorry to be so blunt, but one should not write a book about topics that one is not intimate with. Given that the book is probably quite successful, it propagates error into a community whose members may not have the statistical background to spot the errors immediately. Some methods used in the book are quite hard to understand even for graduate students and to be so nonchalant about the underlying theory can be dangerous. I realize that the book is intended to be superficial with regards to mathematical or conceptual depth, but this combined with some of the presented high-level techniques can easily backfire when people are given the tools, but not the understanding.
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