Preface

Complex statistics in machine learning worry a lot of developers. Knowing statistics helps you build strong machine learning models that are optimized for a given problem statement. I believe that any machine learning practitioner should be proficient in statistics as well as in mathematics, so that they can speculate and solve any machine learning problem in an efficient manner. In this book, we will cover the fundamentals of statistics and machine learning, giving you a holistic view of the application of machine learning techniques for relevant problems. We will discuss the application of frequently used algorithms on various domain problems, using both Python and R programming. We will use libraries such as scikit-learn, e1071, randomForest, c50, xgboost, and so on. We will also go over the fundamentals of deep learning with the help of Keras software. Furthermore, we will have an overview of reinforcement learning with pure Python programming language.

The book is motivated by the following goals:

• To help newbies get up to speed with various fundamentals, whilst also allowing experienced professionals to refresh their knowledge on various concepts and to have more clarity when applying algorithms on their chosen data.
• To give a holistic view of both Python and R, this book will take you through various examples using both languages.
• To provide an introduction to new trends in machine learning, fundamentals of deep learning and reinforcement learning are covered with suitable examples to teach you state of the art techniques.