R is a powerful platform for data analysis and machine learning. It is my main workhorse for things like competitions and consulting work. The reason is the large amounts of powerful algorithms available, all on the one platform. In this post I want to point out some resources you can use to get started in […]
Practical Advice for Getting Started in Machine Learning
David Mimno is an assistant professor in the Information Sciences department at Cornell University. He has a background and interest in Natural Language Processing (NLP), specifically topic modeling. Notably, he is the chief maintainer of MALLET, the Java-based NLP library. I recently came across a blog post by David titled “Advice for students of machine […]
Quick and Dirty Data Analysis with Pandas
Before you can select and prepare your data for modeling, you need to understand what you’ve got to start with. If you’re a using the Python stack for machine learning, a library that you can use to better understand your data is Pandas. In this post you will discover some quick and dirty recipes for […]
Prepare Data for Machine Learning in Python with Pandas
If you are using the Python stack for studying and applying machine learning, then the library that you will want to use for data analysis and data manipulation is Pandas. This post gives you a quick introduction to the Pandas library and point you in the right direction for getting started. Let’s get started. Data […]
Machine Learning Algorithm Recipes in scikit-learn
You have to get your hands dirty. You can read all of the blog posts and watch all the videos in the world, but you’re not actually going to start really get machine learning until you start practicing. The scikit-learn Python library is very easy to get up and running. Nevertheless I see a lot […]
The Best Machine Learning Algorithm
What is the best machine learning algorithm? I get this question a lot. Maybe even daily. Sometimes it’s a general question. I figure people want to make sure they are learning the one true machine learning algorithm and not wasting their time on anything less. Most other times it is with regard to a specific […]
Computer Hardware for Machine Learning
A question that comes up from time to time is: What hardware do I need to practice machine learning? There was a time when I was a student when I was obsessed with more speed and more cores so I could run my algorithms faster and for longer. I have changed my perspective. Big hardware […]
How I Got Started In Machine Learning
I get a lot of emails asking about how I got interested in machine learning and about my background. I don’t think my story is special or interesting, but I’m happy to share it and honored I’m asked. This post feels a little self-indulgent. I figure it can be the definitive version of my story […]
Machine Learning for Money
A question I get asked a lot is: How can I make money with machine learning? You can get a job with your machine learning skills as a machine learning engineer, data analyst or data scientist. That is the goal of a great many people that contact me. There are also other options. In this […]
Work on Machine Learning Problems That Matter To You
It is difficult to stay motivated when self-studying machine learning. The standard test datasets can be quite obtuse and disconnected from you and from your everyday life. Boring even. A trick that you might like to use is to find and work on a dataset that matters to you. In this post, we will look at […]