Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering. He worked for Intel Corporation for seven years in California and China. Peter holds five U.S. patents and his work has been published in three academic journals. He is currently the chief scientist for Zillabyte Inc. Prior to joining Zillabyte, he was a machine learning software consultant for two years. Peter spends his free time competing in programming competitions and building 3D printers.

books by Peter Harrington

Machine Learning in Action

  • April 2012
  • ISBN 9781617290183
  • 384 pages
  • printed in black & white
  • Available translations: Simplified Chinese

A machine is said to learn when its performance improves with experience. Learning requires algorithms and programs that capture data and ferret out the interesting or useful patterns. Once the specialized domain of analysts and mathematicians, machine learning is becoming a skill needed by many.

Machine Learning in Action is a clearly written tutorial for developers. It avoids academic language and takes you straight to the techniques you'll use in your day-to-day work. Many (Python) examples present the core algorithms of statistical data processing, data analysis, and data visualization in code you can reuse. You'll understand the concepts and how they fit in with tactical tasks like classification, forecasting, recommendations, and higher-level features like summarization and simplification.

Readers need no prior experience with machine learning or statistical processing. Familiarity with Python is helpful.