Preface

Not a single day passes that we do not hear about big data in the news media, technical conferences, and even coffee shops. The ever-increasing amount of data collected in process monitoring, research, or simple human behavior becomes valuable only if you extract knowledge from it. Machine learning is the essential tool to mine data for knowledge. This book covers the what, why, and how of machine learning:

• What are the objectives and the mathematical foundations of machine learning?
• Why is Scala the ideal programming language to implement machine learning algorithms?
• How can you apply machine learning to solve real-world problems?

Throughout this book, machine learning algorithms are described with diagrams, mathematical formulations, and documented snippets of Scala code, allowing you to understand these key concepts in your own unique way.