Machine Learning With Random Forests And Decision Trees: A Mostly Intuitive Guide, But Also Some Python


Scott Hartshorn - 2016
    They are typically used to categorize something based on other data that you have. The purpose of this book is to help you understand how Random Forests work, as well as the different options that you have when using them to analyze a problem. Additionally, since Decision Trees are a fundamental part of Random Forests, this book explains how they work. This book is focused on understanding Random Forests at the conceptual level. Knowing how they work, why they work the way that they do, and what options are available to improve results. This book covers how Random Forests work in an intuitive way, and also explains the equations behind many of the functions, but it only has a small amount of actual code (in python). This book is focused on giving examples and providing analogies for the most fundamental aspects of how random forests and decision trees work. The reason is that those are easy to understand and they stick with you. There are also some really interesting aspects of random forests, such as information gain, feature importances, or out of bag error, that simply cannot be well covered without diving into the equations of how they work. For those the focus is providing the information in a straight forward and easy to understand way.

Deep Learning


John D. Kelleher - 2019
    When we use consumer products from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, or Baidu, we are often interacting with a deep learning system. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, computer scientist John Kelleher offers an accessible and concise but comprehensive introduction to the fundamental technology at the heart of the artificial intelligence revolution.Kelleher explains that deep learning enables data-driven decisions by identifying and extracting patterns from large datasets; its ability to learn from complex data makes deep learning ideally suited to take advantage of the rapid growth in big data and computational power. Kelleher also explains some of the basic concepts in deep learning, presents a history of advances in the field, and discusses the current state of the art. He describes the most important deep learning architectures, including autoencoders, recurrent neural networks, and long short-term networks, as well as such recent developments as Generative Adversarial Networks and capsule networks. He also provides a comprehensive (and comprehensible) introduction to the two fundamental algorithms in deep learning: gradient descent and backpropagation. Finally, Kelleher considers the future of deep learning—major trends, possible developments, and significant challenges.

Artificial Intelligence: 101 Things You Must Know Today About Our Future


Lasse Rouhiainen - 2018
    In fact, AI will dramatically change our entire society.You might have heard that many jobs will be replaced by automation and robots, but did you also know that at the same time a huge number of new jobs will be created by AI?This book covers many fascinating and timely topics related to artificial intelligence, including: self-driving cars, robots, chatbots, and how AI will impact the job market, business processes, and entire industries, just to name a few.This book is divided into ten chapters:Chapter I: Introduction to Artificial IntelligenceChapter II: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Many IndustriesChapter III: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Business ProcessesChapter IV: Chatbots and How They Will Change CommunicationChapter V: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing the Job MarketChapter VI: Self-Driving Cars and How They Will Change Traffic as We Know ItChapter VII: Robots and How They Will Change Our LivesChapter VIII: Artificial Intelligence Activities of Big Technology CompaniesChapter IX: Frequently Asked Questions About Artificial Intelligence Part IChapter X: Frequently Asked Questions About Artificial Intelligence Part IITo enhance your learning experience and help make the concepts easier to understand, there are more than 85 visual presentations included throughout the book.You will learn the answers to 101 questions about artificial intelligence, and also have access to a large number of resources, ideas and tips that will help you to understand how artificial intelligence will change our lives.Who is this book for?Managers and business professionalsMarketers and influencersEntrepreneurs and startupsConsultants and coachesEducators and teachersStudents and life-long learnersAnd everyone else who is interested in our future.Are you ready to discover how artificial intelligence will impact your life This guidebook offers a multitude of tools, techniques and strategies that every business and individual can quickly apply and benefit from.

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics


Roger Penrose - 1989
    Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his little finger told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects. The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.

Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics and Speech Recognition


Dan Jurafsky - 2000
    This comprehensive work covers both statistical and symbolic approaches to language processing; it shows how they can be applied to important tasks such as speech recognition, spelling and grammar correction, information extraction, search engines, machine translation, and the creation of spoken-language dialog agents. The following distinguishing features make the text both an introduction to the field and an advanced reference guide.- UNIFIED AND COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF THE FIELDCovers the fundamental algorithms of each field, whether proposed for spoken or written language, whether logical or statistical in origin.- EMPHASIS ON WEB AND OTHER PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSGives readers an understanding of how language-related algorithms can be applied to important real-world problems.- EMPHASIS ON SCIENTIFIC EVALUATIONOffers a description of how systems are evaluated with each problem domain.- EMPERICIST/STATISTICAL/MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE PROCESSINGCovers all the new statistical approaches, while still completely covering the earlier more structured and rule-based methods.

The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches


Marshall Brain - 2015
    We currently see no evidence of any kind indicating that extraterrestrials exist outside of our solar system. But at this moment, millions of engineers, scientists, corporations, universities and entrepreneurs are racing to create the second intelligent species right here on planet earth. And we can see the second intelligent species coming from all directions in the form of self-driving cars, automated call centers, chess-playing and Jeopardy-playing computers that beat all human players, airport kiosks, restaurant tablet systems, etc. The frightening thing is that these robots will soon be eliminating human jobs in startling numbers. The first wave of unemployed workers is likely to be a million truck drivers who are replaced by self-driving trucks. Pilots will be eliminated soon as well. Then, as new computer vision systems come online, we will see tens of millions of workers in retail stores, fast food restaurants and construction sites replaced by robots. Unless we take steps now to change the economy, we will soon have tens of millions of workers who are unemployed and seeking welfare because they will have no other choice. Marshall Brain's new book "The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches" explores how the future will unfold as the second intelligent species emerges. The book answers questions like: - How will new computer vision systems affect the job market? - How many people will become unemployed by the second intelligent species? - What will happen to millions of newly unemployed workers? - How can modern society and modern economies cope with run-away unemployment caused by robots? - What will happen when the first sentient, conscious computer appears? - What moral and ethical principles will guide the second intelligent species? - Why do we see no extraterrestrials in our universe? "The Second Intelligent Species" offers a unique and fascinating look at the future of the human race, and the choices we will need to make to avoid massive unemployment and poverty worldwide as intelligent machines start eliminating millions of jobs.

Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust


Gary F. Marcus - 2019
    Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones in the field, but they argue that a computer winning in games like Jeopardy and go does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules. These approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The world we live in is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Marcus and Davis show us what we need to first accomplish before we get there and argue that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we heed their advice, humanity can create an AI that we can trust in our homes, our cars, and our doctor's offices. Reboot provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of what we can achieve and how AI can make our lives better.

Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know


Jerry Kaplan - 2016
    It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans. Whether we regard them as conscious or unwitting, revere them as a new form of life or dismiss them as mere clever appliances, is beside the point. They are likely to play an increasingly critical and intimate role in many aspects of our lives.The emergence of systems capable of independent reasoning and action raises serious questions about just whose interests they are permitted to serve, and what limits our society should place on their creation and use. Deep ethical questions that have bedeviled philosophers for ages will suddenly arrive on the steps of our courthouses. Can a machine be held accountable for its actions? Should intelligent systems enjoy independent rights and responsibilities, or are they simple property? Who should be held responsible when a self-driving car kills a pedestrian? Can your personal robot hold your place in line, or be compelled to testify against you? If it turns out to be possible to upload your mind into a machine, is that still you? The answers may surprise you.

How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future


David L. Hu - 2018
    Animals move with astounding grace, speed, and versatility: how do they do it, and what can we learn from them? In How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls, David Hu takes readers on an accessible, wondrous journey into the world of animal motion. From basement labs at MIT to the rain forests of Panama, Hu shows how animals have adapted and evolved to traverse their environments, taking advantage of physical laws with results that are startling and ingenious. In turn, the latest discoveries about animal mechanics are inspiring scientists to invent robots and devices that move with similar elegance and efficiency.Hu follows scientists as they investigate a multitude of animal movements, from the undulations of sandfish and the way that dogs shake off water in fractions of a second to the seemingly crash-resistant characteristics of insect flight. Not limiting his exploration to individual organisms, Hu describes the ways animals enact swarm intelligence, such as when army ants cooperate and link their bodies to create bridges that span ravines. He also looks at what scientists learn from nature's unexpected feats--such as snakes that fly, mosquitoes that survive rainstorms, and dead fish that swim upstream. As researchers better understand such issues as energy, flexibility, and water repellency in animal movement, they are applying this knowledge to the development of cutting-edge technology.Integrating biology, engineering, physics, and robotics, How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls demystifies the remarkable mechanics behind animal locomotion.

Probably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World


Leslie Valiant - 2013
    We nevertheless muddle through even in the absence of theories of how to act. But how do we do it?In Probably Approximately Correct, computer scientist Leslie Valiant presents a masterful synthesis of learning and evolution to show how both individually and collectively we not only survive, but prosper in a world as complex as our own. The key is “probably approximately correct” algorithms, a concept Valiant developed to explain how effective behavior can be learned. The model shows that pragmatically coping with a problem can provide a satisfactory solution in the absence of any theory of the problem. After all, finding a mate does not require a theory of mating. Valiant’s theory reveals the shared computational nature of evolution and learning, and sheds light on perennial questions such as nature versus nurture and the limits of artificial intelligence.Offering a powerful and elegant model that encompasses life’s complexity, Probably Approximately Correct has profound implications for how we think about behavior, cognition, biological evolution, and the possibilities and limits of human and machine intelligence.

Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective


Stephen Marsland - 2009
    The field is ready for a text that not only demonstrates how to use the algorithms that make up machine learning methods, but also provides the background needed to understand how and why these algorithms work. Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective is that text.Theory Backed up by Practical ExamplesThe book covers neural networks, graphical models, reinforcement learning, evolutionary algorithms, dimensionality reduction methods, and the important area of optimization. It treads the fine line between adequate academic rigor and overwhelming students with equations and mathematical concepts. The author addresses the topics in a practical way while providing complete information and references where other expositions can be found. He includes examples based on widely available datasets and practical and theoretical problems to test understanding and application of the material. The book describes algorithms with code examples backed up by a website that provides working implementations in Python. The author uses data from a variety of applications to demonstrate the methods and includes practical problems for students to solve.Highlights a Range of Disciplines and ApplicationsDrawing from computer science, statistics, mathematics, and engineering, the multidisciplinary nature of machine learning is underscored by its applicability to areas ranging from finance to biology and medicine to physics and chemistry. Written in an easily accessible style, this book bridges the gaps between disciplines, providing the ideal blend of theory and practical, applicable knowledge."

Advanced Apex Programming for Salesforce.com and Force.com


Dan Appleman - 2012
    Intended for developers who are already familiar with the Apex language, and experienced Java and C# developers who are moving to Apex, this book starts where the Force.com documentation leaves off. Instead of trying to cover all of the features of the platform, Advanced Apex programming focuses entirely on the Apex language and core design patterns. You’ll learn how to truly think in Apex – to embrace limits and bulk patterns. You’ll see how to develop architectures for efficient and reliable trigger handling, and for asynchronous operations. You’ll discover that best practices differ radically depending on whether you are building software for a specific organization or for a managed package. And you’ll find approaches for incorporating testing and diagnostic code that can dramatically improve the reliability and deployment of Apex software, and reduce your lifecycle and support costs. Based on his experience both as a consultant and as architect of a major AppExchange package, Dan Appleman focuses on the real-world problems and issues that are faced by Apex developers every day, along with the obscure problems and surprises that can sneak up on you if you are unprepared.

Tesla Motors: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Sparked the Next Tech Revolution


Charles Morris - 2014
    The most trusted sources in the auto industry have called its Model S the most advanced, safest and best-performing car ever built - and it doesn’t use a drop of gasoline. Tesla has changed the way the public perceives electric vehicles, and inspired the major automakers to revive their own dormant efforts to sell EVs. However, even amidst the avalanche of media coverage that followed the triumph of the Model S, few have grasped the true significance of what is happening. Tesla has redefined the automobile, sparked a new wave of innovation comparable to the internet and mobile computing revolutions, and unleashed forces that will transform not just the auto industry, but every aspect of society. The Tesla story is one part of an ongoing tide of change driven by the use of information technology to eliminate “friction” such as geographic distance, middlemen and outdated regulations. Tesla is simply applying the new order to the auto industry, but the automobile is such a pervasive influence in our lives that redefining how it is designed, built, driven and sold will have sweeping effects in unexpected areas. Just as Tesla built the Model S as an electric vehicle “from the ground up,” it has taken an outsider’s approach to the way it markets its cars. Its direct sales model has drawn legal challenges from entrenched auto dealers, who fear that their outdated business model will be destroyed. Its systems approach to the software and electronics in its cars has highlighted how far behind the technological times the major automakers are. It’s easy to see why readers find Tesla irresistible. CEO Elon Musk is a superstar entrepreneur, a “nauseatingly pro-US” immigrant and the leader of two other cutting-edge companies. Tesla dares to challenge the establishment behemoths and, so far at least, has handily beaten them at their own game. In this history of the 21st century’s most exciting startup, Charles Morris begins with a brief history of EVs and a biography of Tesla’s driving force, Elon Musk. He then details the history of the company, told in the words of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who made it happen. There are many fascinating stories here: Martin Eberhard’s realization that there were many like himself, who loved fast cars but wanted to help the environment and bring about the post-oil age; the freewheeling first days, reminiscent of the early internet era; the incredible ingenuity of the team who built the Roadster; Tesla’s near-death experience and miraculous resurrection; the spiteful split between the company’s larger-than-life leaders; the gloves-off battles with hostile media such as Top Gear and the New York Times; and the media’s ironic about-face when the magnificent Model S won the industry’s highest honors, and naysayers became cheerleaders overnight. And the story is just beginning: Tesla has breathtakingly ambitious plans for the future.This book was updated May 1, 2015 to include the latest on the Gigafactory and the D package.

Deep Learning


Ian Goodfellow - 2016
    Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones; a graph of these hierarchies would be many layers deep. This book introduces a broad range of topics in deep learning.The text offers mathematical and conceptual background, covering relevant concepts in linear algebra, probability theory and information theory, numerical computation, and machine learning. It describes deep learning techniques used by practitioners in industry, including deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology; and it surveys such applications as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames. Finally, the book offers research perspectives, covering such theoretical topics as linear factor models, autoencoders, representation learning, structured probabilistic models, Monte Carlo methods, the partition function, approximate inference, and deep generative models.Deep Learning can be used by undergraduate or graduate students planning careers in either industry or research, and by software engineers who want to begin using deep learning in their products or platforms. A website offers supplementary material for both readers and instructors.

Machine Learning


Tom M. Mitchell - 1986
    Mitchell covers the field of machine learning, the study of algorithms that allow computer programs to automatically improve through experience and that automatically infer general laws from specific data.