Preface
Through exposure to the news and social media, you probably are familiar with the fact that machine learning has become one of the most exciting technologies of our time and age. Large companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, IBM, and many more, heavily invest in machine learning research and applications for good reasons. While it may seem that machine learning has become the buzzword of our time and age, it is certainly not hype. This exciting field opens the way to new possibilities and has become indispensable to our daily lives. Talking to the voice assistant on our smartphones, recommending the right product for our customers, preventing credit card fraud, filtering 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 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.
Getting exposed to practical code examples and working through example applications of machine learning is a great way to dive into this field. Concrete examples help to illustrate the broader concepts by putting the learned material directly into action. However, remember that with great power comes great responsibility! In addition to offering hands-on experience with machine learning using Python and Python-based machine learning libraries, this book also introduces the mathematical concepts behind machine learning algorithms, which is essential for using machine learning successfully. Thus, this book is different from a purely practical book; it is 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.
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 field. If you find that your thirst for knowledge is not satisfied, this book references many useful resources that you can use to follow up on the essential breakthroughs in this field.
