I initially scanned the comments of An Introdution to Scientific Programming and Simulation with R. It makes emphasis on scientific computation, as it titled and you stated. It treats R as a Matlab-like software, so that you have make great progress in Ng’s machine learning course where use Matlab frequently.
I have graduated, and I am no longer a student. I must be employed as quickly. As a result, I am afraid that I have not enough time to participate MOOCs. It is practical skills and working experience rather than theories from classes that I can utilize in my jobs for the future. As to being a PhD,… Only later.
I found that you had downloaded a Linux book titled The Linux Command Lines: A Complete Introduction. Actually, I have been a Linuxer since early 2013. Linux is based on CLI (Command-Line Interface), opposite to GUI in Windows, which implys more fundamentals of computers (and maybe programming). I recommend you to install it in your computer physically. Just try command lines in Linux, and failure does not matter.
There are another three books in your list I want to point out. PRML and ESLII are both the most important references in machine learning. However, their prerequires involve so many mathematical and statistical theories, so we probably cannot grasp them . Applied Predictive Modelling is a recent book, and it is being translated into Chinese. I will read it after the publication of Chinese editon. It is said that PREDICTION is one of the prior activities in business, and I hope APM is useful for us.
Hi brother Yong,
Thanks a lot for you recommendations of the R books. They are very helpful and give me a clear guidance on how to learn R in an effective way. I’m really impressed by your elegant English writing. I think your great English writing combined with your solid academic background, a PHD program is the best fit for you haha.
I attached some books with this email. (At first I made one zip file but I don’t know why I can’t upload it, so I upload one by one. Sorry about the inconvenience.) One of the R book I would recommend for you is called Introduction to Scientific Programming and Simulation Using R, which you can find in the attachment. I read the first 12 chapters and I gain a lot insights on how to write algorithms using R. After reading this book, I’m able to finish the assignment using R, instead of matlab, in Andrew Ng’s machine learning course on Coursera. I’m currently taking an introduction to interactive programming in Python. It just started this week so we can take it together if you want. Here is a screen shot of this course:
I’m also going to take another two coursers on coursera, which will start in next few days. Here is a screen shot of them:
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Actually I have finished first 8 weeks of study of machine learning and the corresponding assignments. Sometimes I was stuck by the programming assignments of machine learning, I would go to this website (https://github.com/merwan/ml-class) for help. The code solutions this website provide are very concise and I learnt a lot from them. The reason I re-take this course is that this time I would like to get the certificate which has a signature of Andrew Ng on it.
Ok, that’s all I want to share with you today. Let’s share experience, insight and resource with each other continually, because I believe it will a great way to make big improvement for both of us. I hope everything well with you!
Best,
Brother Sen