Starting from when I begin to prepare for my Ph.D. comprehensive exams, and well into my research, I will continue to make a summary of my study and research into blog posts. This really is for 3 selfish reasons:

• Allows me to fill my website blog entries, without dedicating separate time;
• It gets me into writing mode, for when I start to put thoughts and research content together for my thesis. I reckon I might be able to use some entries as thesis content as well;
• Most importantly, it serves a well-intended recap of what I have just studied or researched upon, as well as a summary for when I intend to “brush up”.

The research is generalized around Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) as well as Data Streams (DS), and focused around Natural Computing (NC) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Some of the acronym I added to these topics are only relevant on this site. As I proceed with the blog entries, I will tag them with the relevant acronyms as specified above. I imagine there will be many posts that will belong to multiple fields, and hence tagged appropriately.

For my exams studies, the books I am reading are:

• Data Mining and Concept Learning, 3rd Ed by Jiawei Han, Jian Pei and Micheline Kamber
• Knowledge Discovery from Data Streams by Joao Gama
• Fundamentals of Natural Computing - Basic Concepts, Algorithms, and Application by Leandro Nunes de Castro
• Fundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by Chris Manning and Hinrinch Schütze
• Natural Language Processing for Social Media, 2nd Ed by Atefeh Farzindar and Diana Inkpen
• Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville

As I proceed, most of the blog entries regarding these topics will be my synthesis of the books’ contents as well as other relevant information that might have been gleaned for other sources, all appropriately attributed. With this in mind, It is fair to assume that any misunderstanding, and in essence, miscommunication of the ideas in these excellent books can only be as a result of my poor grasp of what might have been conveyed in the respective books. I earnestly apologize for any of those that might occur in the future. I will try as much as possible to make corrections as soon as it’s noticed or brought to my attention.