A First Course in Machine Learning

"I was impressed by how closely the material aligns with the needs of an introductory course on machine learning, which is its greatest strength. While there are other books available that aim for completeness, with exhaustively comprehensive introductions to every branch of machine learning, the book by Rogers and Girolami starts with the basics, builds a solid and logical foundation of methodology, before introducing some more advanced topics. The essentials of the model construction, validation, and evaluation process are communicated clearly and in such a manner as to be accessible to the student taking such a course. I was also pleased to see that the authors have not shied away from producing algebraic derivations throughout, which are for many students an essential part of the learning process-many other texts omit such details, leaving them as 'an exercise for the reader.' Being shown the explicit steps required for such derivations is an important part of developing a sense of confidence in the student. Overall, this is a pragmatic and helpful book, which is well-aligned to the needs of an introductory course and one that I will be looking at for my own students in coming months."
-David Clifton, University of Oxford, UK

"In my opinion, this is by far the best introduction to Machine Learning. It accomplishes something I would think impossible: it assumes essentially only high school mathematics and no statistics background, and yet, by introducing math, probability and statistics as needed, it manages to do an entirely rigorous introduction to Machine Learning. Proofs are not provided only for very few theorems; the book goes fairly deep and is really enjoyable to read. I told my students that this book will be one of the best investments they have ever made!"
-Aleksandar Ignjatovic, University of New South Wales

"The new edition of A First Course in Machine Learning by Rogers and Girolami is an excellent introduct