'The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book' by Andriy Burkov
By Andriy Burkov

July 26, 2021

'The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book' by Andriy Burkov

If you are trying to learn the nuts-and-bolts behind the machinery of Machine Learning (ML), like I am, then this is a nice, short book to dive into. Don't let the brevity of the book fool you, though. This book is 130 pages of pure rubix cube type thinking. This book takes a bit of work to digest, and I am still trying to assimilate Chapters 1 and 2, to be honest. Nevertheless, I feel that great things will come from persistence in understanding this material, as it has caused Cindy and I to ponder what exactly constitutes the word 'Intelligence' in 'Artificial Intelligence (AI)'; and further, is Machine Learning truly a waypoint on the path to AI or AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)?


…any classification learning algorithm that builds a model implicitly or explicitly creates a decision boundary. The decision boundary can be straight, or curved, or it can have a complex form, or it can be a supersition of some geometrical figures.‘The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book’ by Andriy Burkov, pg. 6

Machine Learning - It’s All About The Model

As I discussed in this episode’s podcast, regarding my reading of Andriy Burkov’s supremely brief, yet complex, book, ‘The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book’, Machine Learning is all about the model. The ‘model’ is kind of like a mini brain that gets generated from training a Machine Learning (ML) data set with a given algorithm (like a Neural Network).

In fact, my very first programming examples leveraging ML capabilities were only possible because of the pre-trained models built by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in support of the ML services they offer, such as Alexa, their DeepLense platform and several others. Developing an Alexa Skill, for example, is a great way to start to get an introductory knowledge of how ML works, at least from an Application Programming Interface (API) perspective. Alexa Skill developers leverage highly complex ML Alexa models to create powerful Voice User Interfaces (VUI) that seem almost human-like.

In fact, Dream10x has an Alexa Skill that you can use to find and play episodes of our podcast. The link to the Alexa Skill is below in the links section.

Hello ML World

After reading Andriy Burkhov’s book, I decided to set out to see what the simplest ML program is I could develop to help illustrate the process, at least, for training an ML model from scratch. Thanks to Google and TensorFlow, I found a simple Python example that helped to answer a few lingering questions I have had on the topic. If interested, check out my GitHub Project to see how it works (link below).

OK, So What?

Thinking about how humans think and learn is imperative in defining the process for how machines learn…and vice versa. Human thinking and learning only stands to improve from the process. The wild card, in my mind, is how we define ‘intelligence’, which I contend wholely sets humans apart…for now.

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