The book covers the basic foundations up to advanced theory and algorithms. I copied the table of contents below. It’s kind of math heavy, but well explained with visual examples and pseudo-code.
Moreover, the book contains multiple exercises for you to internalize the knowledge and skills.
As an added bonus, the professors teach a number of machine learning courses, the lecture slides and materials of which you can also access for free via the book’s website.
Machine learning is one of the fastest growing areas of computer science, with far-reaching applications. The aim of this textbook is to introduce machine learning, and the algorithmic paradigms it offers, in a principled way. The book provides a theoretical account of the fundamentals underlying machine learning and the mathematical derivations that transform these principles into practical algorithms. Following a presentation of the basics, the book covers a wide array of central topics unaddressed by previous textbooks. These include a discussion of the computational complexity of learning and the concepts of convexity and stability; important algorithmic paradigms including stochastic gradient descent, neural networks, and structured output learning; and emerging theoretical concepts such as the PAC-Bayes approach and compression-based bounds. Designed for advanced undergraduates or beginning graduates, the text makes the fundamentals and algorithms of machine learning accessible to students and non-expert readers in statistics, computer science, mathematics and engineering.
Another pearl of a resource on Twitter is this thread by Madison on 10 of fundamentalal concepts of Javascript — and programming in general for that matter.
For your convience, I copied the links below. Just click them to browse to the resource and learn more about the concept
If you're learning JavaScript, you've likely heard people tell you how important it is to learn the fundamentals.
But what are they? And where do you learn them?
Here's a list of JavaScript fundamentals and my favorite free resources for learning them. 👇
After several years of proscrastinating, the inevitable finally happened: Three months ago, I committed to learning Python!
I must say that getting started was not easy. One afternoon three months ago, I sat down, motivated to get started. Obviously, the first step was to download and install Python as well as something to write actual Python code. Coming from R, I had expected to be coding in a handy IDE within an hour or so. Oh boy, what was I wrong.
Apparently, there were already a couple of versions of Python present on my computer. And apparently, they were in grave conflict. I had one for the R reticulate package; one had come with Anaconda; another one from messing around with Tensorflow; and some more even. I was getting all kinds of error, warning, and conflict messages already, only 10 minutes in. Nothing I couldn’t handle in the end, but my good spirits had dropped slightly.
With Python installed, the obvious next step was to find the RStudio among the Python IDE’s and get working in that new environment. As an rational consumer, I went online to read about what people recommend as a good IDE. PyCharm seemed to be quite fancy for Data Science. However, what’s this Spyder alternative other people keep talking about? Come again, there are also Rodeo, Thonny, PyDev, and Wing? What about those then? A whole other group of Pythonista’s said that, as I work in Data Science, I should get Anaconda and work solely in Jupyter Notebooks! Okay…? But I want to learn Python to broaden my skills and do more regular software development as well. Maybe I start simple, in a (code) editor? However, here we have Atom, Sublime Text, Vim, and Eclipse? All these decisions. And I personally really dislike making regrettable decisions or committing to something suboptimal. This was already taking much, much longer than the few hours I had planned for setup.
This whole process demotivated so much that I reverted back to programming in R and RStudio the week after. However, I had not given up. Over the course of the week, I brought the selection back to Anaconda Jupyter Notebooks, PyCharm, and Atom, and I was ready to pick one. But wait… What’s this Visual Studio Code (VSC) thing by Microsoft. This looks fancy. And it’s still being developed and expanded. I had already been working in Visual Studio learning C++, and my experiences had been good so far. Moreover, Microsoft seems a reliable software development company, they must be able to build a good IDE? I decided to do one last deepdive.
The more I read about VSC and its features for Python, the more excited I got. Hey, VSC’s Python extension automatically detects Python interpreters, so it solves my conflicts-problem. Linting you say? Never heard of it, but I’ll have it. Okay, able to run notebooks, nice! Easy debugging, testing, and handy snippets… Okay! Machine learning-based IntelliSense autocompletes your Python code – that sounds like something I’d like. A shit-ton of extensions? Yes please! Multi-language support – even tools for R programming? Say no more! I’ll take it. I’ll take it all!
Linting in VSC provides code suggestions
My goods friends at Microsoft were not done yet though. To top it all of, they have documented everything so well. It’s super easy to get started! There are numerous ordered pages dedicated to helping you set up and discover your new Python environment in VSC:
The Microsoft VSC pages also link to some more specific resources:
Editing Python in VS Code: Learn more about how to take advantage of VS Code’s autocomplete and IntelliSense support for Python, including how to customize their behvior… or just turn them off.
Linting Python: Linting is the process of running a program that will analyse code for potential errors. Learn about the different forms of linting support VS Code provides for Python and how to set it up.
Debugging Python: Debugging is the process of identifying and removing errors from a computer program. This article covers how to initialize and configure debugging for Python with VS Code, how to set and validate breakpoints, attach a local script, perform debugging for different app types or on a remote computer, and some basic troubleshooting.
Unit testing Python: Covers some background explaining what unit testing means, an example walkthrough, enabling a test framework, creating and running your tests, debugging tests, and test configuration settings.
Python IntelliSense in VSC makes real-time code autocomplete suggestions
My Own Python Journey
So three months in I am completely blown away at how easy, fun, and versatile the language is. Nearly anything is possible, most of the language is intuitive and straightforward, and there’s a package for anything you can think of. Although I have spent many hours, I am very happy with the results. I did not get this far, this quickly, in any other language. Let me share some of the stuff I’ve done the past three months.
I’ve mainly been building stuff. Some things from scratch, others by tweaking and recycling other people’s code. In my opinion, reusing other people’s code is not necessarily bad, as long as you understand what the code does. Moreover, I’ve combed through lists and lists of build-it-yourself projects to get inspiration for projects and used stuff from my daily work and personal life as further reasons to code. I ended up building:
solutions to the first 31 problems of Project Euler, which I highly recommend you try to solve yourself!
solutions to the first dozen problems posed in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. This book and online tutorial forces you to get your hands dirty right from the start. Simply amazing content and the learning curve is precisely good
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." – Rick Cook#programming#coding#ArtificialStupidity no.20 pic.twitter.com/cBiR1HQszn
all Socratica Python Youtube videos. They are simply a fantastic introduction to the language and amazingly amusing. You can sponsor them here
hours and hours of Corey Shafer’s Youtube channel. Seriously good quality content, and more in-depth than Socratica. Corey covers the versatile functionalities included in the standard Python libraries and then some more
Although it is no longer maintained, you might find some more, interesting links on my Python resources page or here, for those transitioning from R. If only the links to the more up-to-date resources pages. Anyway, hope this current blog helps you on your Python journey or to get Python and Visual Studio Code working on your computer. Please feel free to share any of the stories, struggles, or successes you experience!
Since 1988, the Royal Society has celebrated outstanding popular science writing and authors.
Each year, a panel of expert judges choose the book that they believe makes popular science writing compelling and accessible to the public.
Over the decades, the Prize has celebrated some notable winners including Bill Bryson and Stephen Hawking.
The author of the winning book receives £25,000 and £2,500 is awarded to each of the five shortlisted books. And this year’s shortlist includes some definite must-reads on data and statistics!
The captivating story of mathematics’ greatest ever idea: calculus. Without it, there would be no computers, no microwave ovens, no GPS, and no space travel. But before it gave modern man almost infinite powers, calculus was behind centuries of controversy, competition, and even death.
Taking us on a thrilling journey through three millennia, Professor Steven Strogatz charts the development of this seminal achievement, from the days of Archimedes to today’s breakthroughs in chaos theory and artificial intelligence. Filled with idiosyncratic characters from Pythagoras to Fourier, Infinite Powers is a compelling human drama that reveals the legacy of calculus in nearly every aspect of modern civilisation, including science, politics, medicine, philosophy, and more.
Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman.
Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap–a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.
This book does not deal with data or statistics specifically, but might even be more interesting, as it covers the topic of quantum physics:
Quantum physics is strange. It tells us that a particle can be in two places at once. That particle is also a wave, and everything in the quantum world can be described entirely in terms of waves, or entirely in terms of particles, whichever you prefer.
All of this was clear by the end of the 1920s, but to the great distress of many physicists, let alone ordinary mortals, nobody has ever been able to come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. Physicists have sought ‘quanta of solace’ in a variety of more or less convincing interpretations.
This short guide presents us with the six theories that try to explain the wild wonders of quantum. All of them are crazy, and some are crazier than others, but in this world crazy does not necessarily mean wrong, and being crazier does not necessarily mean more wrong.
In a recent post, Claus shared the link to a GitHub repository where he hosts some of the R programming code with which Claus made the graphics for his dataviz book. The repository is named practical ggplot2, after the R package Clause used to make many of his visuals.
Check it out, the page contains some pearls and the code behind them, which will help you learn to create fabulous visualizations yourself. Some examples:
paulvanderlaken.com 