To get the most out of this book

There are no strict prerequisites for this book; however, it's important to have basic-intermediate Python knowledge with a specific focus on NumPy. Whenever necessary, I will provide instructions/references to install specific packages and exploit more advanced functionalities. As Python is based on a semantic indentation, the published version can contain incorrect newlines that raise exceptions when executing the code. For this reason, I invite all readers without deep knowledge of this language to refer to the original source code provided with the book.

All the examples are based on Python 3.5+. I suggest using the Anaconda distribution (https://www.anaconda.com/download/), which is probably the most complete and powerful one for scientific projects. The majority of the required packages are already built in and it's very easy to install the new ones (sometimes with optimized versions). However, any other Python distribution can be used. Moreover, I invite readers to test the examples using Jupyter (formerly known as IPython) notebooks so as to avoid rerunning the whole example when a change is made. If instead an IDE is preferred, I suggest PyCharm, which offers many built-in functionalities that are very helpful in data-oriented and scientific projects (such as the internal Matplotlib viewer).

A good mathematics background is necessary to fully understand the theoretical part. In particular, basic skills in probability theory, calculus, and linear algebra are required. However, I advise you not to give up when a concept seems too difficult. The reference sections contain many useful books, and the majority of concepts are explained quite well on Wikipedia too. When something unknown is encountered, I suggest reading the specific documentation before continuing. In many cases, it's not necessary to have complete knowledge and even an introductory paragraph can be enough to understand their rationale.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-Machine-Learning-Algorithms. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MasteringMachineLearningAlgorithms_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "In Scikit-Learn, it's possible to split the original dataset using the train_test_split() function."

A block of code is set as follows:

from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

X_train, X_test, Y_train, Y_test = train_test_split(X, Y, train_size=0.7, random_state=1)

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. 

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.