preface.txt

Originally when I wrote the first edition of Thoughtful Machine Learning it was out of frustration with a lack of discipline with co-workers. Back in 2009 I was working on lots of machine learning projects and found that as soon as we introduced support vector machines, neural nets or anything else all of a sudden common coding practice just went out the window.

Thoughtful Machine Learning was a response to that. At the time I focused 100% of my time writing code in Ruby and wrote Thoughtful Machine Learning in Ruby. Well as you could imagine that was a tough challenge and I'm excited to present a new edition of this book rewritten in Python.

I have gone through most chapters, changed examples and made it much more up to date and useful for people who will write machine learning code. I hope you enjoy it.

As I stated in the original edition of Thoughtful Machine Learning: my door is always open. If you want to talk to me for any reason feel free to drop me a line at matt@matthewkirk.com. If you ever make it to Seattle I would love to meet you over coffee.

When I wrote the first edition of Thoughtful Machine Learning, it was out of frustration. For whatever reason, machine learning projects didn’t sync up with standard development practices.

So when it came time to write, I focused 100% of my time writing code in Ruby. It was a tough challenge, for obvious reasons.

Two years later, I’m pleased to introduce a new edition of Thoughtful Machine Learning - rewritten in Python. I have revised chapters, changed examples and updated it to help engineers write machine learning code more efficiently.

I hope you enjoy it.

If you have a question, comment or happen to be in the Seattle area, please reach out to me at matt@matthewkirk.com. My door is always open.