Programming Machine Learning

Appendix 2The Words of Machine Learning

One of the first hurdles for machine learning rookies is learning the vocabulary. So many words in ML sound familiar, and yet subtly foreign. You’ll probably ask yourself questions like: “Am I supposed to already know what a feature is?”, or “What does numerically stable mean, exactly?”

This appendix gives you quick definitions of common terms and expressions of ML. Most entries also refer you to the section in the book where a term is first introduced, in case you need something more than a quick reminder. These definitions have no pretense to be Wikipedia-worthy. They’re here just to trigger your memory and point you at additional information.

You won’t find all the terms from the book in here—only those ...