Don't mean to hijack the comment thread, but can anyone recommend any good videos that introduce machine learning or courses? I studied computer science, but was not able to take any classes on the subject. I found the Stanford one, anyone have experience with it?
I've heard nothing but good reviews of the online version of the class. I took the class at Stanford (and actually worked on the system mentioned in the article) and I found its content to be useful. I believe that the online version contains less theory but this is not necessarily a bad thing if all you want is an introduction.
I've also found reading papers to be illuminating: often the first article about a given classifier is fairly well written and accessible if you have a strong background in math.
I really liked the Caltech course. I didn't spend too much time trying the Stanford one, but I got the sense that this one had more of an overarching theoretical framework that every new concept was explained in terms of.
http://online.stanford.edu/course/machine-learning