Data and AI give the best hope to the toughest problems that the world faces today. Am I making a sweeping statement? Not really—it's a modest statement of fact. From robotics to self-driving cars, farming that alleviates world hunger, to finding a solution to early diagnostics to critical illness—deep learning is one of the most enthralling areas of discovery and disruption. It has also fuelled the transformation of numerous businesses such as media and entertainment, insurance, healthcare, retail, education, and information technology.
This book is the perfect material for every data science enthusiast who wants to understand the concepts of deep learning: with R codes explained comprehensibly, it is the best place to start. The authors have maintained a perfect balance between theoretical and practical aspects of deep learning algorithms and applications. It turned out to be a great read—thanks to the easy flow of various sections such as Getting Ready, How to Do it, and How it Works.
After starting with some good insights on how to set up a deep learning environment in a local system, the authors address how the reader can leverage various cloud platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to scale deep learning applications. If you are looking for some quick thoughts on any topic, you can read any chapter individually without getting bogged about the sequence.
An interesting fact about this book is that it not only covers the generic topics of deep learning such as CNN, RNN, GAN, Autoencoders but also throws light on specific state-of-the-art techniques such as transfer learning and reinforcement learning. I like the practical examples in the chapters: Working with Convolutional Networks, Deep Generative models, Working with Text and Audio and NLP. They are bound to kindle some thought-starters on what can be done using image and text data. The data sets are very aptly chosen for the examples provided.
Overall, this book is an engaging and inspiring read. I congratulate the writers of the book- Swarna, Rehan, and Dipayan for their contribution to this field of study and I look forward to more such works from them.
Pradeep Jayaraman
Head of Analytics, Adani Ports & SEZ