Data Mining and Machine Learning Essentials

This is the one to get if you are serious about ai & machine learning.

This is the third book I have read on ai & machine learning this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. The chapters on ai & machine learning are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. One of those books that pays for itself within the first few chapters. Highly recommended.

Strong content, uneven pacing. I would still recommend it.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

Some sections were excellent and others felt like filler.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.