The amount of data available on machine learning is enough to keep us busy for more than a lifetime. However, we don’t want to spend all our lives reading. So, as quality matters much more than quantity, here are my top 5 books that I believe are a must-read for any Machine Learning engineer, ranked in order.
| Official Book Cover by Andriy Burkov |
5. The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
This book is renowned for its simplicity in teaching you machine learning concepts. If you are a complete beginner and want to get a one-week crash course on machine learning — this is the book for you. It is written in a short and to-the-point manner, so it won’t bore you along the way.
And guess what, the good guy Andriy Burkov made the book available online.
But, if you have the money to spend, I highly recommend buying the book. Not only does it show support for the writer, but I consider this book a must-have in your Machine Learning section of the library.
The book starts with an introduction regarding what machine learning is and it then continues to explain different categories of machine learning algorithms.
It then explains all the types of notations that will be used in the book and that are usually used in machine learning generally.
It then teaches, in each chapter:
- Fundamental Machine Learning Algorithms;
- Anatomy of a Learning algorithm;
- Basic practice —things like feature engineering, Learning algorithm selection, three sets overfitting/underfitting, etc.
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning;
- Problems and solutions — as a general troubleshooter for the algorithms you learned;
- Unsupervised learning;
- Other forms of learning;
The rest you can see inside the book. I highly recommend you get it as part of your library.
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| Book by Aurelien Geron |
4. Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow
This is a very good book if you are a more hands-on type of learner. It teaches theory while you also start working on programming the algorithms it teaches straight after.
As you can clearly see from the title, the coding is done in Python and its Machine learning Packages. And that is very good since Python is the most used programming language for Machine Learning. Python lets you keep programming simple, while you can focus on what matters.
You can also find this book online. I guess people in the Machine Learning field earn enough to give their books for free :).
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| Book by Stuart Rusell and Peter Norvig |
3. Artificial Intelligence — A Modern Approach
Ah… this book brings memories. It was the first book I read on the subject. One of the best of all time in my opinion. But as you probably consider, I am probably biased by the fact that it was my first. You never forget your first.
All of this aside, this book gives you a strong basis for Artificial Intelligence. This book is called “The most famous AI book in the world” for a good reason. I will let you find out the rest of it, as it is a very pleasant read.
The chapters of the book will let you know what it’s all about:
- Artificial intelligence
- Problem-solving
- Knowledge and reasoning
- Uncertain Knowledge and reasoning
- Learning
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| Book by Andrew NG |
2. Machine Learning Yearning
“Don’t worry about it if you don’t understand”. This is the Meme Andrew Ng is most famous for. If you didn’t hear about it yet, it means you just started your Machine Learning Journey. You soon will, trust me!
Another good lad, Andrew NG posted his book online on GitHub here.
Andrew Ng is a great instructor and he has some awesome Coursera courses that you can find here. I highly recommend doing his courses and reading this book if you want to grab Machine Learning fast and easily.
And remember, if you don’t know mathematics, don’t worry about it!
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| Book by Yoshua Bengio, Ian Goodfellow and Aaron Courville |
1. Deep Learning
The best book for Machine Learning and Deep learning, period. This is written by 3 top active researchers on machine learning and deep learning.Yoshua Bengio is considered one of the fathers of Machine Learning who also won a Turing prize for his work developing the field during his still-active career.
Ian Goodfellow is one of the top researchers in the field and he is currently working at OpenAI, which is the leading research and development company in the field of Machine Learning with a heavy focus on Deep Learning.
The experience of the authors and the information in this book are godlike. It has around 800 pages of information and honestly… If you read this book and understand it, and do some practice examples in Python, you will be ready to be hired on a machine learning post. I have no doubt about it. If you have the money, buy it! You need to have this book under your pillow, take it with you shopping, while walking your dog, and while going for a swim (put it in a plastic bag).
All exaggerations aside, a godly book for Machine Learning. Get it online here!
Conclusion
Even if you may prefer online courses and other types of learning, I highly recommend buying some books in your library and spending some relaxing hours reading the books above. It will be a different experience from online courses that will engrave the knowledge in your skull forever.
If you read all those 5 books and understand the concepts and mathematics in them, you are ready to work at Google or OpenAI. Happy reading!
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