Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
Book Review: Excellent Resource for Clustering Algorithoms and Other AI Algorithoms
Summary: 5 Stars
I use python as my primary programming language, when I ordered this book I was concerned it would be more about website design then AI algorithms (collective intelligence encompasses a subset of soft AI algorithms that draw upon information from various sources readily avaliable on the Internet, large document collections, etc.) I found the text to be readable with broad application in other areas including document classification systems for analyzing large amount of documents in the context of e-discovery. I would recommend this book to anyone using any-type of clustering process for review and analyzing documents and data. Taxonomic, clustering, neural networks, etc. are sold generally to the public as magic while in fact the concepts are readily accessible in this book.Book Review: Great working examples
Summary: 4 Stars
Love the book, great topical review of methods with working examples. Every chapter makes you think of a dozen things you could do next.
My only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is that the code examples are all python-based and leverage python specific features. The book title should be "Programming Collective Intelligence...with Python" although it does present a fun challenge to convert the examples to a different language (like Ruby!).
Book Review: useable math in the web 2.0 sphere
Summary: 5 Stars
This book introduces you to a lot of useful math for web 2.0 or social based applications and brings it all the way down to code you can write and run in Python. I learned about some great python libraries out there like beautiful soup and others which are useful in more ways than just the collective intelligence aspect utilized in the book. There were even a few more elegant ways of doing something in Python that I learned through reading the code in this book. Just about every application I use could make use of the math and algorithms in this book to make using it a bit more pleasant experience. If you're a python programmer you must have this on your bookshelf, if you are a programmer that wants people to like your application you should have this book in a tattered state on your bookshelf.Book Review: Fantastic Intro to Machine Learning for Software Engineers
Summary: 5 Stars
Have you ever wondered how:
* Google comes up with its search results
* Amazon recommends you books/movies/music
* spam filters decide good from bad
Well, Toby Segaran not only explains these topics and more in Collective Intelligence, but he does so in a way accessible to software developers that haven't worked on machine-learning problems before. He even provides working Python code for all the algorithms.
Collective Intelligence is a great read. I could not wait to get home and get back to it -- and when I went in to work the next morning, I usually had a new idea or two of how to improve our software. I also have been implementing the most important examples in Groovy to make sure I get them.
Collective Intelligence is accessible to all practicing software engineers, but if you are a Senior Software Engineer or "better," this is a must-read. Proper application of the algorithms in this book are a great way to simplify your system and avoid getting nickel-and-dimed to death with new ways to prioritize/categorize/slice-and-dice your data.
Book Review: Algorithms By Example
Summary: 5 Stars
I've worked in web development for years now. I get excited when I see new web trends and applications come out, and I love the progress we've made with mashups and the like. It's great to see what the web has become.
I picked this book up because all the examples were in Python, and I'm a big fan of python. I also liked the concept of writing mashups in Python. I expected it to be very python-centric. It was, but that wasn't what stuck out to me.
What I found was a book all about algorithms. I've been fascinated with some of the algorithms we see every day on the internet (Amazon's suggestion algorithm has been my favorite). Instead of presenting confusing math equations, or using huge words, Segaran puts examples in front of you. From online dating services, to del.icio.us trends, this book puts forward modern, real world examples of using common collective intelligence algorithms on the internet.
Anyone interested in building a mashup or web development in general should read this book.