I’m pretty much on the “big data”, “data science” bandwagon as an important emerging trend in computing. An essential element is the application of machine learning approaches to massive data sets. Never really got into machine learning while doing my graduate work. Since my day job isn’t particularly big on developing engineer’s personal technical skills, I’m exploring an autodidactic approach.
Hilary Mason’s An Introduction to Machine Learning with Web Data looks like a promising starting point. I have to say though I found her PyCon keynote and Strange Loop presentations to not have the depth I was anticipating. High on humor and rah, rah. Low on real technical insights.
But for the $29.99 O’Reilly is charging it better at least have good production values. And I hadn’t actually noticed that O’Reilly had seriously expanded into downloadable video courses.