What should the reader focus on?

This question has been asked of me every time I give a class on machine learning and artificial intelligence. I mentioned in the introductory chapter that one may want to be a machine learning practitioner or a machine learning researcher. My professional role straddles both. This allows me some experience to provide a bit of advice for readers interested in either field.

The practitioner

To the practitioner, the most important skill is not in machine learning. The most important skill is in understanding the problem. Implicit in this statement is that the practitioner should also at least understand which machine learning algorithms would be suitable for the problem at hand. Obviously this...