Dino Esposito - Introducing Machine Learning

Writing a book with your son is a special experience even when its the umpteenth book you write. For this one, I just put down in (hopefully clear) words Francescos thoughts, vision, and his deep, and largely unexplained, understanding of machine learning. I definitely learned a lot from writing as much as I hope you will learn from reading.

If I learned a lot, well, that was mostly because of two people.

Its not the first time I have done some writing under the technical supervision of Cesar De la Torre Llorente, and its always been a heavenly experience. I love his pragmatism and accuracy in devising, before designing, software products. Hes currently principal program manager on the .NET product group at Microsoft and is in charge of the development of ML.NET. This is not specifically a book on ML.NET, but if the parts of the book that illustrate the .NET way to machine learning are accurate, well, thats because of the great help we received from Cesar.

Theres an aspect in renewable energy that is little known: you need intelligent software to make it happen. At least on a functional level, it is vital to make accurate production, outage, fault, and price forecasts. Now, I dont think there are many people on this planet with a decades worth of experience in this area that only recently was appointed the label artificial intelligence. Tiago Santos has been our guide in the random forest of machine learning and real-world artificial intelligence. AI is just software is now our shared motto.

If Ive been able to give my career yet another turn (from Windows to web development and from software architecture to machine learning), its also because two other people keep my creativity constantly stimulated. Giorgio Garcia-Agreda of Crionet made real my dreams as a tennis fanatic come true, up to singing Easy like Sunday morning in front of the tennis bigwigs. Simone Massaro of BaxEnergy discovered a fascinating new space where my renewable energy as a thinker can be freely expressed, sometimes even in front of top managers.

Any book is the result of teamwork, and it is our pleasure to call out the names of those who ultimately made it possible: Loretta Yates, as the acquisition editor; Charvi Arora, the managing editor, and Tonya Simpson, production editor.

Dino

I finished high school one year early, and all I wanted was some money to practice as a professional investor. I had the wrong parents, though, and that approach didnt work. So, I asked my dad how to make money. Thats your problem, he said. I can only teach you all I know. So, he taught me how to do things right and forgot to teach me how to do it wrong. As a result, today, we make the same mistakes in software. At this point, with some money in my hands, I was blissfully neglecting college when, on a hot summer afternoon, my dad told me, Be honest: if you dont want to train your brain further, resign from college. As a result, a month later, I was back in class with a radically different mindset. I love mathematics, and I cant live doing anything different from it.

Then I met Gianfrancofriend, business partner, father, grandfather. Hes a real professional investor, and he too taught me how to do things right and forgot to teach me how to do it wrong. As a result, today, we make the same mistakes in finance.

At school, at work, in the stock market, I study and try things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they dont, and whenever they dont, I learn something. Its the stick and carrot principle: the essence of learning for humans and machines. This book stems from my obsession for mathematical rigor and my dads obsession for clarity. We used the stick on ourselves during the writing to ensure that carrots would be available during the reading.

This book is for you, Mom, because youd love me anyway, regardless of triumph, disaster, or other impostors. This is for you, Maicol, because youd love me even more if I stopped making noise on Sunday mornings.