Rob Thomas: A Practical Guide to Machine Learning: Understand, Differentiate, and Apply

Co-authored by Jean-Francois Puget (@JFPuget) Machine Learning represents the new frontier in analytics, and is the answer of how many companies can capitalize on the data opportunity. Machine Learning was first defined by Arthur Samuel in 1959 as a "Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed." Said another way, this is the automation of analytics, so that it can be applied at scale. What is highly manual today (think about an analyst combing thousand line spreadsheets), becomes automatic tomorrow (an easy button) through technology. If Machine Learning was first defined in 1959, why is this now the time to seize the opportunity?