bookwormDotAt Vienna, Austria

Machine learning is a huge topic in computer science, and most of the standard work out there (like "Machine Learning" from Sam Mitchell, ISBN 0070428077 or "Data Mining. Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques" by Witten/Frank, ISBN: 978-0120884070) are hard to get into at first.

This book makes a very good introduction into the topic. It is really just a an overview, but it is a good one. The Author uses python code and open web APIs to introduce the most important aspects in machine learning. I recommend to start here and then continue with the books from Witten/Frank and Sam Mitchell.

Some decent knowledge of programming is required to benefit from this book.

- "All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International.". Cool.

- first chapter: Brian Kernighan (THE Brian Kernighan, from K&R, ISBN:978-0131103627) shows a simple implementation of a regular expression syntax. Very interesting piece of C.

- chapter by Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz): Very short and pretty boring. I found this sounded more like a 0815 Ruby vs Java Discussion. You will find all of these arguments when you search google for something like Ruby Java or something. I expected more from the creator of Ruby.

- The book does not only contain beautiful code: I also love the cover of this book for its simple beauty.

- Very interesting chapter by Arun Mehta about how to design a software for Steven Hawkin's text to speech system.