Hands-on Machine Learning: excellent book, if you know the basics | Reviews - TechTalks

This article is part of “AI education”, a series of posts that review and explore educational content on data science and machine learning. (In partnership with Paperspace)

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Ben Dickson, software engineer and the founder of TechTalks , Writing an all-encompassing book on Python machine learning is difficult, given how expansive the field is.

Photo: Depositphotos (with modification)

But reviewing one is not an easy feat either, especially when it’s a highly acclaimed title such as Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems, 2^nd Edition.

The book is a best-seller on Amazon, and the author, Aurélien Géron, is arguably one of the most talented writers on Python machine learning.

And after reading Hands-on Machine Learning, I must say that Geron does not disappoint, and the second edition is an excellent resource for Python machine learning. Geron has managed to cover more topics than you’ll find in most other general books on Python machine learning, including a comprehensive section on deep learning.

But there are some caveats, and unless you come prepared, you won’t be able to appreciate everything Hands-on Machine Learning has to offer...

Final verdict 
Hands-on Machine Learning is a must-read for anyone embarking on the Python machine learning and deep learning journey. However, I do not recommend it as a first step, and it’s certainly not the last book standing between you and a career in machine learning.

In case you’re new to the field, I would suggest reading an introductory book on Python data science before picking up Hands-on Machine Learning. If you already have some Python and data science skills, these two specialized books are quick reads that will help you better prepare for the depth of the material provided in Hands-on Machine Learning. They provide you with a solid background in Python math and data-manipulation libraries.

Also, I would recommend reading another book on machine learning such as Python Machine Learning or taking an online course like Udemy’s Machine Learning A-Z before or after Hands-on Machine Learning. You’ll find a lot of overlap, but each offers new perspectives and topics that the others don’t cover.
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Source: TechTalks