Chapter 1. Spark for Machine Learning

This chapter provides an introduction to Apache Spark from a Machine Learning (ML) and data analytics perspective, and also discusses machine learning in relation to Spark computing. Here, we first present an overview of Apache Spark, as well as Spark's advantages for data analytics, in comparison to MapReduce and other computing platforms. Then we discuss five main issues, as below:

All of the above are the most important topics that any data scientist or machine learning professional is expected to master, in order to fully take advantage of Apache Spark computing. Specifically, this chapter will cover all of the following six topics.