

Machine Learning on the Cheap and Easy - thunderboltlabs
http://thunderboltlabs.com/posts/machine-learning-on-the-cheap-and-easy

======
raffi
For _getting started_ I really liked Toby Segarin's Programming Collective
Intelligence. It was my introduction to this area before I went on to produce
After the Deadline.

~~~
evilmartini
I read that one, I liked the fact that he builds up each example from first
principles. It's hard to find _explanations_ that bridge theory and practice.

------
colincsl
Thanks for the link!

Not to try to highjack the post, but for those interested in resources for
computer vision see my post from a few months ago:
[http://colinlea.posterous.com/on-self-guided-study-of-
comput...](http://colinlea.posterous.com/on-self-guided-study-of-computer-
vision)

~~~
evilmartini
Good stuff - I added <http://szeliski.org/Book/> to my reading list, thanks
for sharing the link. There's a huge overlap for certain classes of problems.
CV in many ways resembles the same problems with large online data streams,
noisy, time critical, huge volumes of data - feature extraction is
problematic. Hybrid solutions usually required.

I've found that reading books from other ML domains helps out in understanding
the application and getting ideas on how to approach the problem.

~~~
nphrk
As I experienced it, Szeliski's book is better as a reference as it covers
lots of material (just see the number of citations at the end). I don't think
it's an easy read without reading (some of) the cited papers (or having
background knowledge).

------
Fivesheep
I think the two free online courses provided by Stanford last year is really
good for beginners.

~~~
teeray
It's also one of the courses complete with materials in the new iTunes U app.

~~~
binarysolo
Thanks for the head's up... been meaning to watch it as a refresher.

------
runciter
I highly recommend the 'elements of statistical learning' but also Bishop's
'pattern recognition and machine learning'

~~~
evilmartini
I just added it to my list of books to review. Thanks for mentioning it. What
did you like about Bishop's Book?

------
3pt14159
These are really, really basic tools and books. Once you're past this you can
get a copy of some good Springer books (e.g. "Recommender Systems Handbook")
and follow up on the papers and studies referenced.

~~~
nphrk
I woundn't consider The Elements of Statistical Learning Theory a (very) basic
book. It covers plenty of material in relatively good depth.

