Artificial Intelligence with Python: A Comprehensive Guide to Building Intelligent Apps for Python Beginners and Developers Paperback – 27 Jan. 2017

I purchased two Packt publications on AI and ML. Both are extremely poorly written, poorly researched and extremely difficult to follow. Language, terms, descriptions and content are difficult to follow at best, or archaic at worst. Nothing is explained and require additional research at almost every step. Screenshots sizes are inconsistent, do not add value and in many cases are blown up to an extent where screenshot fonts well exceeds the book print. This gives the impression images are added to maximize uptake of the book print real estate. In some cases, you have to work out that some instructions are included in screenshots, rather than within the actual text. I have come to the conclusion that Packt publications are no more than résumé fillers for their authors. The publication includes no references. I learned more from YouTube videos. Beware of catchy one liners such as 'A Comprehensive Guide to Building Intelligent Apps for Python Beginners and Developers'. This is nothing more than bait. The book is an insult to the word 'comprehensive', and the best use python beginners may make of this publication is to send it back immediately for a refund and look for an academic and referenced text - Item not as described.

This book covers a lot of material that is in principle very interesting, but it covers too much ground in far too little depth. Basically, the author talks you one piece of example code for applications of algorithms as varied as logistic regression, support vector machines, or convolutional neural nets. The amount of background about these algorithms presented is MINIMAL, If you want a collection of worked examples of how to use free python libraries like sklearn to do smartish data classification then this book may have some value for you. If you want to learn key concepts and techniques in some depth, or at least find decent definitions of many of the key terms, then this book will disappoint. I certainly find it disappointing. What I find particularly galling is that these shortcomings should have been very obvious if only the publisher had allowed me to see more of the book in the kindle or online preview. Given the paucity of material in the preview and the near absence of reviews I bought the book on faith, and I regret it.