Ask: Is there a "Machine Learning for Dummies"?

by sown on 3/16/2011, 6:57 AM with 4 comments

Maybe such a book shouldn't exist but I'm just curious. I tried taking the hacker dojo course but it's too theoretical for me. It'll be long before this saturday before I have HW #1 done.

I'm kind of a person who needs code and an explination and example. I sound dumb compared to most of you but that's the kind of programmer I am, i guess

  • by DevX101 on 3/16/2011, 7:45 AM

    Programming Collective Intelligence. It's very well written and you can cover quite a bit of ground without too much arcane theory.

  • by cschmidt on 3/16/2011, 2:29 PM

    If you want a "less math" machine learning book, I like these two:

    Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Third Edition

    Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, Mark A. Hall

    http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag...

    Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective

    Stephen Marsland

    http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Perspecti...

  • by achompas on 3/17/2011, 5:54 AM

    PCI is a great, not-too-mathy primer. Let me also add that Drew Conway and Johnny Myles White are working on a ML-type cookbook. Should be available soon via O'Reilly (I think).

  • by HowardRoark on 3/17/2011, 4:06 AM

    To get started, try Mining the Social Web, followed by Programming Collective Intelligence.