1. Machine learning basics

This chapter covers A brief overview of machine learning Key tasks in machine learning Why you need to learn about machine learning Why Python is so great for machine learning

I was eating dinner with a couple when they asked what I was working on recently. I replied, “Machine learning.” The wife turned to the husband and said, “Honey, what’s machine learning?” The husband replied, “Cyberdyne Systems T-800.” If you aren’t familiar with the Terminator movies, the T-800 is artificial intelligence gone very wrong. My friend was a little bit off. We’re not going to attempt to have conversations with computer programs in this book, nor are we going to ask a computer the meaning of life. With machine learning we can gain insight from a dataset; we’re going to ask the computer to make some sense from data. This is what we mean by learning, not cyborg rote memorization, and not the creation of sentient beings.