A very accessible book with good examples. you don't need to have a very deep understanding of machine learning to find this book useful. Recommended for beginners with not much sophisticated

mathematical knowledge. 

I started machine learning study with mohout. 

you know, mohout use map&reduce. so it's very poor when it comes to speed.

many machine learning alogorithm use iterative calculation to get a suitable answer. 

but map&reduce is weak for  iterative behavior that forces lots of  wasting network i/o and file i/o. 

so if you find high speed solution, answer is hama or spark.

but mohout is more famous so you can find good  example code or education book more easily.

When i studied this book, it' difficult to install scipy. because my ubuntu had some problem.

you know..somthimes  ubuntu  sucks.

Especially this book has interesting subject. e.g sentiment analysis