Drew Conway

John Myles White

If you’re an experienced programmer interested in crunching data, this book will get you started with machine learning—a toolkit of algorithms that enables computers to train themselves to automate useful tasks. Authors Drew Conway and John Myles White help you understand machine learning and statistics tools through a series of hands-on case studies, instead of a traditional math-heavy presentation. Each chapter focuses on a specific problem in machine learning, such as classification, prediction, optimization, and recommendation. Using the R programming language, you’ll learn how to analyze sample datasets and write simple machine learning algorithms. Machine Learning for Hackers is ideal for programmers from any background, including business, government, and academic research. Develop a naïve Bayesian classifier to determine if an email is spam, based only on its text Use linear regression to predict the number of page views for the top 1,000 websites Learn optimization techniques by attempting to break a simple letter cipher Compare and contrast U.S. Senators statistically, based on their voting records Build a “whom to follow” recommendation system from Twitter data

Case Studies and Algorithms to Get You Started

Machine Learning for Hackers

John White

This compact book explores standard tools for text classification, and teaches the reader how to use machine learning to decide whether a e-mail is spam or ham (binary classification), based on raw data from The SpamAssassin Public Corpus. Of course, sometimes the items in one class are not created equally, or we want to distinguish among them in some meaningful way. The second part of the book will look at how to not only filter spam from our email, but also placing "more important" messages at the top of the queue. This is a curated excerpt from the upcoming book "Machine Learning for Hackers."

Spam Filtering and Priority Inbox

Machine Learning for Email

If you’re an experienced programmer willing to crunch data, this concise guide will show you how to use machine learning to work with email. You’ll learn how to write algorithms that automatically sort and redirect email based on statistical patterns. Authors Drew Conway and John Myles White approach the process in a practical fashion, using a case-study driven approach rather than a traditional math-heavy presentation. This book also includes a short tutorial on using the popular R language to manipulate and analyze data. You’ll get clear examples for analyzing sample data and writing machine learning programs with R. Mine email content with R functions, using a collection of sample files Analyze the data and use the results to write a Bayesian spam classifier Rank email by importance, using factors such as thread activity Use your email ranking analysis to write a priority inbox program Test your classifier and priority inbox with a separate email sample set

Presents algorithms that enable computers to train themselves to automate tasks, focusing on specific problems such as prediction, optimization, and classification.

Drew Conway

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