Introduction

The term machine learning has all sorts of meanings attached to it today, especially after Hollywood’s (and others’) movie studios have gotten into the picture. Films such as Ex Machina have tantalized the imaginations of moviegoers the world over and made machine learning into all sorts of things that it really isn’t. Of course, most of us have to live in the real world, where machine learning actually does perform an incredible array of tasks that have nothing to do with androids that can pass the Turing Test (fooling their makers into believing they’re human). Machine Learning For Dummies provides you with a view of machine learning in the real world and exposes you to the amazing feats you really can perform using this technology. Even though the tasks that you perform using machine learning may seem a bit mundane when compared to the movie version, by the time you finish this book, you realize that these mundane tasks have the power to impact the lives of everyone on the planet in nearly every aspect of their daily lives. In short, machine learning is an incredible technology — just not in the way that some people have imagined.