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Summary: This book has proselytized me!!!!
Review: Everything I will do in the future will be based on ML and just one semester of an ML course & this book has converted me(even though my major is not Comp.Science). Of-course this is due majorly to Dr. Thomas Ioerger and his teaching abilities(Texas A&M), but the book presents all concepts(even seemingly complex ones) in a way that is easy and enjoyable to learn. One of the most useful books I've ever studied!
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Summary: excellent book
Review: Excellent book , state-of-the-art, nice presentation and covering lots of topics in a friendly manner. highly recommended !
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Summary: Technique Without Substance
Review: Have you ever bought something that warns "assembly required" only to find out that the instructions are missing? That's a pretty accurate analogy to how Mitchell's book left me feeling. With an empty smile, he hands you a bag of techniques and tells you to go to town. Sure, there are hints about when you might apply particular algorithms, but they are abstract and occasionally hidden in the text. It's as if you've been handed a wrench and told that it can turn things. Huzzah.When describing a field of knowledge, it's important to communicate the "Big Picture." Mitchell does a poor job of this. That is to say that he doesn't do this at all. The lack of a pervasive thread is all the more odd and disconcerting given that his dissertation gave an amazingly coherent description of the process of inductive learning. I suppose I feel a bit taken because there's nothing so tangible or real to hold the disjoint chapters together. So, without any real historical or philosophical context, we're left with something reminiscent of a first-year calculus book. Here's how to differentiate, here's how to integrate, now go figure out what you're supposed to do with those things. Nevertheless, anyone needing a reference guide (think of a shop manual) to machine learning techniques (that isn't quite up to date) would do well to buy this book. Anyone wanting to understand the field of machine learning should probably check out a bit of the competition. I think you'll find that some folks' kung fu is stronger.
Rating:
Summary: Technique Without Substance
Review: Have you ever bought something that warns "assembly required" only to find out that the instructions are missing? That's a pretty accurate analogy to how Mitchell's book left me feeling. With an empty smile, he hands you a bag of techniques and tells you to go to town. Sure, there are hints about when you might apply particular algorithms, but they are abstract and occasionally hidden in the text. It's as if you've been handed a wrench and told that it can turn things. Huzzah. When describing a field of knowledge, it's important to communicate the "Big Picture." Mitchell does a poor job of this. That is to say that he doesn't do this at all. The lack of a pervasive thread is all the more odd and disconcerting given that his dissertation gave an amazingly coherent description of the process of inductive learning. I suppose I feel a bit taken because there's nothing so tangible or real to hold the disjoint chapters together. So, without any real historical or philosophical context, we're left with something reminiscent of a first-year calculus book. Here's how to differentiate, here's how to integrate, now go figure out what you're supposed to do with those things. Nevertheless, anyone needing a reference guide (think of a shop manual) to machine learning techniques (that isn't quite up to date) would do well to buy this book. Anyone wanting to understand the field of machine learning should probably check out a bit of the competition. I think you'll find that some folks' kung fu is stronger.
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Summary: An excellent overview for the adv. undergrad or beg. grad
Review: I agree with some of the previous reviews which criticize the book for its lack of depth, but I believe this to be an asset rather than a liability given its target audience (seniors and beginning grad. students). The average college senior typically knows very little about subjects like neural networks, genetic algorithms, or Baysian networks, and this book goes a long way in demystifying these subjects in a very clear, concise, and understandable way. Moreover, the first-year grad. student who is interested in possibly doing research in this field needs more of an overview than to dive deeply into
one of the many branches which themselves have had entire books written about them. This is one of the few if only books where one will find diverse areas of learning (e.g. analytical, reinforcment, Bayesian, neural-network, genetic-algorithmic) all within the same cover. But more than just an encyclopedic introduction, the author makes a number of connections between the different paradigms. For example, he explains that associated with each paradigm is the notion of an inductive-learning bias, i.e. the underlying assumptions that lend validity to a given learning approach. These end-of-chapter discussions on bias seem very interesting and unique to this book. Finally, I used this book for part of the reading material for an intro. AI class, and received much positive feedback from the students, although some did find the presentation a bit too abstract for their undergraduate tastes
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Summary: Only book of it's kind
Review: I am a graduate student at a major research university. I am currently taking my fifth AI/Machine Learning graduate course. This is the one book everyone grabs for when they need a reference. I had to mark the spine of my book with tape so I could find it more easily on my colleagues shelves. Other books are either not as accessible or too niche-specific. This is the only book out there that covers all of the major machine learning techniques (with the possible exception of support vector machines) and covers them in a manner that can be well understood. Every discipline has one book that must be on your shelf. If you are planning on doing serious research in Machine Learning - this is the one book.
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Summary: Excellent overview of all major machine learning topics.
Review: I first used this book as the required text for my course in ML in 1997 and got rave reviews from the students. I will be using it again in 1999. I found ALL of the major topics and issues in ML addressed. The book is easily readable with anyone with a computer science background, and the book works quite well in a wide variety of approaches to presentation at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.
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Summary: A 5 star as an introduction book
Review: I got this book from the university's library, because I wanted a nice book that can show me different methods for machine learning, so I can learn the buzzwords, and understand their meaning, at least in principle. It was important to me that the book won't go too much in depth into any subject, and more importantly, that the book won't use unfamiliar terminology, unless explained before. This book is indeed a nice overview of the field at the time it was written, although a lot happened in Machine Learning since, the book remains a good source for learning what can be done and how. Reading the book is quite easy (I'm a graduate student in computer science), and quickly I got what I was asking for. This book is not a magic pill for any problem. This is not a cookbook. So the compliments are in place as long as you know what you're looking for. These days I attend a seminar where the students are asked, each student in turn to present one chapter from this book (and some other books). Surely, once the seminar is over, we (the students) will know enough to be able to chat about Machine Learning, and more importantly, we will know where to look for deeper texts if we wanted to.
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Summary: Excellent reference book
Review: I liked the book. But I think author must provide more figures in the book like Duda and Hart's Pattern Classification book. I used the book as master course and I found it easy to follow, interesting and useful book even I am newcomer to topic.
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Summary: Covers important aspects but lacks depth
Review: I teach AI at the graduate level in a major US research University, and I specialize in the area. The book does cover many different areas of Machine Learning. Unfortunately, the treatment is quite superficial. A student would find it extremely difficult to grasp imortant concepts without referring to other material. It may be a good reference, but I would definitely not recommend it as the main textbook. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few books in this area adequate for a senior or graduate level course.
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