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Preface
I probably don't need to tell you that machine learning has become one of the most
exciting technologies of our time and age. Big companies, such as Google, Facebook,
Apple, Amazon, IBM, and many more, heavily invest in machine learning research
and applications for good reasons. Although it may seem that machine learning has
become the buzzword of our time and age, it is certainly not a hype. This exciting
eld opens the way to new possibilities and has become indispensable to our daily
lives. Talking to the voice assistant on our smart phones, recommending the right
product for our customers, stopping credit card fraud, ltering out spam from our
e-mail inboxes, detecting and diagnosing medical diseases, the list goes on and on.
If you want to become a machine learning practitioner, a better problem solver, or
maybe even consider a career in machine learning research, then this book is for you!
However, for a novice, the theoretical concepts behind machine learning can be quite
overwhelming. Yet, many practical books that have been published in recent years
will help you get started in machine learning by implementing powerful learning
algorithms. In my opinion, the use of practical code examples serve an important
purpose. They illustrate the concepts by putting the learned material directly into
action. However, remember that with great power comes great responsibility! The
concepts behind machine learning are too beautiful and important to be hidden in
a black box. Thus, my personal mission is to provide you with a different book; a
book that discusses the necessary details regarding machine learning concepts, offers
intuitive yet informative explanations on how machine learning algorithms work,
how to use them, and most importantly, how to avoid the most common pitfalls.
If you type "machine learning" as a search term in Google Scholar, it returns an
overwhelmingly large number-1,800,000 publications. Of course, we cannot discuss
all the nitty-gritty details about all the different algorithms and applications that have
emerged in the last 60 years. However, in this book, we will embark on an exciting
journey that covers all the essential topics and concepts to give you a head start in this
eld. If you nd that your thirst for knowledge is not satised, there are many useful
resources that can be used to follow up on the essential breakthroughs in this eld.