eBook: Intuitive Machine Learning and Explainable AI

Description

By Vincent Granville Ph.D. Published in September 2022. PDF format, 156 pages. Version 1.0 with Python code.

This book covers the foundations of machine learning, with modern approaches to solving complex problems. Emphasis is on scalability, automation, testing, optimizing, and interpretability (explainable AI). For instance, regression techniques — including logistic and Lasso — are presented as a single method, without using advanced linear algebra. There is no need to learn 50 versions when one does it all and more. Confidence regions and prediction intervals are built using parametric bootstrap, without statistical models or probability distributions. Models (including generative models and mixtures) are mostly used to create rich synthetic data to test and benchmark various methods.

Topics covered include clustering and classification, GPU machine learning, ensemble methods including an original boosting technique, elements of graph modeling, deep neural networks, auto-regressive and non-periodic time series, Brownian motions and related processes, simulations, interpolation, random numbers, natural language processing (smart crawling, taxonomy creation and structuring unstructured data), computer vision (shapes generation and recognition), curve fitting, cross-validation, goodness-of-fit metrics, feature selection, curve fitting, gradient methods, optimization techniques and numerical stability.

Methods are accompanied by enterprise-grade Python code, replicable datasets and visualizations, including data animations (gifs, videos, even sound done in Python). The code uses various data structures and library functions sometimes with advanced options. It constitutes a Python tutorial in itself, and an introduction to scientific computing. Some data animations and chart enhancements are done in R. The code, datasets, spreadsheets and data visualizations are also on GitHub.

Chapters are mostly independent from each other, allowing you to read in random order. A glossary, index and numerous cross-references make the navigation easy and unify all the chapters. The style is very compact, getting down to the point quickly, and suitable to business professionals eager to learn a lot of useful material in a limited amount of time. Jargon and arcane theories are absent, replaced by simple English to facilitate the reading by non-experts, and to help you discover topics usually made inaccessible to beginners.

While state-of-the-art research is presented in all chapters, the prerequisites to read this book are minimal: an analytic professional background, or a first course in calculus and linear algebra. The original presentation avoids all unnecessary math and statistics, yet without eliminating advanced topics.

For the table of contents and related material (Python code and so on), visit the GitHub page about this book, here.

About the Author

Vincent Granville is a pioneering data scientist and machine learning expert, co-founder of Data Science Central (acquired by  TechTarget in 2020), former VC-funded executive, author and patent owner. Vincent’s past corporate experience includes Visa, Wells Fargo, eBay, NBC, Microsoft, CNET, InfoSpace. Vincent is also a former post-doc at Cambridge University, and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS).

Vincent published in Journal of Number Theory, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series B), and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. He is also the author of multiple books, available here. He lives  in Washington state, and enjoys doing research on stochastic processes, dynamical systems, experimental math and probabilistic number theory.