Machine learning for hackers
by Drew Conway · first published 2012
33% recommend61% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Practical, case-study driven introduction to machine learning that teaches applying algorithms to real problems; suited to programmers who are already fluent in a language and want hands-on learning.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A balanced introduction to machine learning principles and applications. From the cover: "Case studies and algorithms to get you started".
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Andrew Ng's Coursera ML course is supposed to be pretty accessible. I've also heard good things about Machine Learning for Hackers (http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Hackers-Drew-Conway/d...). Ultimately, ML is a mathematical discipline. You can ask for a gentle approach that gets you to the foot of the mountain, but "if you…
on “Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms (2014)” ↗The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson Artificial Life - Steven Levy On Writing - Stephen King Machine Learning for Hackers - Drew Conway and John Myles White How Doctors Think - Jerome Goopman Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers? - Jimmy Moore & Eric C. Westman Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of…
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗I suppose you being here means that you are already fluent in some programming languages. If so, I would start here: Conway & Miles - Machine Learning for Hackers: Case Studies and Algorithms to Get You Started Once you read and understood this, I'd do an online course...
on “Hey, Computer, Make Me a Font” ↗…they cover things that are so different there isn't any real order. From this bundle, "Think Stats" might be a good first book, and then you can branch out to "Programming Collective Intelligence" and "Machine Learning for Hackers", which are more or less the same thing, except the first one is in Python and the second one in R (and slightly more advanced), or "Data Analysis with open source tools", which is more statistics oriented…
on “Data Science Starter Kit” ↗I found Machine Learning for Hackers to be good as a practical, case study based book for learning to apply and understand what is going on in several machine learning problems. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018483.do http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-for-Hackers-ebook/dp/...…
on “Elements of Statistical Learning” ↗Skip the Packt books and get 'Machine learning for hackers' from O'Reilly.
on “All Packt ebooks are $5” ↗…to do that? Well, read and experiment and build sample projects for yourself... the same things you'd do to learn any new skill. There are a number of good books and websites out there. I'm reading Machine Learning for Hackers now, and also playing around with things like Mahout, OpenNLP, Giraph, and Spark with GraphX and MLib. I'm also looking into learning R, as it's widely used in that analytics / machine learning world.
on “Ask HN: Becoming T-shaped” ↗…my opinion, the "for hackers" title is in reference to multiple books that have been released with the "X for hackers" that targets people with hacking skills but do not have a formal background in X. Machine Learning for Hackers http://www.amazon.co.uk/Machine-Learning-Hackers-Drew-Conway... Design for Hackers http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-B... Bayesian Methods for Hackers http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bayesian-Methods-Hackers-Probabilist...…
on “Statistics for Hackers” ↗Recently? And actually finished as opposed to skimming or working through parts of? Code by Charles Petzold. Of the ones that I haven't finished, but have at least looked at, I think I'd say: Machine Learning for Hackers by Drew Conway and John Myles White and The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos
on “Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?” ↗From Safari: Preface Machine Learning for Hackers: Email How This Book is Organized Conventions Used in This Book Using Code Examples How to Contact Us Using R R for Machine Learning Further Reading on R Data Exploration Exploration…
on “Machine Learning for Hackers” ↗I agree with this. If we're talking about the same thing, many of these are "Machine learning for hackers" type articles and only give a superficial exposure of machine learning with the implicit promise of quick and easy mastery. The problem is, there's really only one way to master this stuff and it's to…
on “Machine Learning for Humans: A Beginner's Guide to AI/ML” ↗I just got Machine Learning for Hackers, Designing Data Visualizations and Think Stats for $20 - steal of the month!
on “O'Reilly - 50% off on R/Stats/Data Ebooks and Videos” ↗I'm definitely grabbing Programming Collective Intelligence[1] and Machine Learning for Hackers[2]. Any recommendations based on those? [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do [2] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018483.do
on “Save 50% on all oreilly's ebooks and videos (today only)” ↗…social sciences with Python"... There must be one book out there that is open source, which could just be rewritten with Python examples? (The most useful thing I've seen is people reworking examples from Machine Learning for Hackers, or one of the Coursera R courses, in Python).
on “R, the master troll of statistical languages (2012)” ↗That looks like TOC for "Machine Learning for Email", which is just a portion of the entire "Machine Learning for Hackers" book. The full "Machine Learning for Hackers" doesn't appear to be on Safari yet.
on “Machine Learning for Hackers” ↗