Best Book on Mahout: Mahout in Action

Mahout in Action is an in depth book about how to use Mahout software, published by Manning Publications Co.

The book is now available as eBook and print version. You no longer have to rely on the MEAP or "Manning Early Access Program" - the finished book is ready.

Is there a free download of eBook for Mahout in Action? Not legally, without buying a copy of print or eBook. But you have a choice to get both or just the eBook alone, for a reduced price. The eBook is available from the publisher, Manning, with or without the print version.
WARNING: piracy sites often contain malware

Buy book from Manning official site and save 37% with this SPECIAL DISCOUNT CODE: mahout37
Manning's website for Mahout in Action

NEW WITH eBOOK Authors provide of audio and video segments eBook enhancements that expand key ideas. For example, Chapter 13 from the Classification section of Mahout in Action has a video segment on online learning algorithms. In addition, you get access to an online author forum with the authors.

If you later decide you want the print version, the full price of the eBook you've already bought is deducted from the print price. Or if you start with the print book, you get the eBook automatically at no additional cost.

Apache Mahout is an open source software project that provides scalable approaches for machine learning. This data mining library is an open source software project that is an excellent resource for the advanced computer programmer. Mahout is particularly useful with very large data sets. Mahout excels in projects with a million training examples. At 10 million or more training examples, Mahout is pretty much the only game in town.

UPDATE: New slides and video presentations from the first Mahout Meet Up held in San Francisco in November 2011 are available online. Presenters were Mahout co-founder and committer Grant Ingersoll and Mahout committer and Mahout in Action author Ted Dunning. Grant talks about using clustering and classification for data mining with email. Ted talks about how Mahout uses random projections to improve performance in machine learning while maintaining quality.

CLICK LINK for free slides and video from the presentations:

Slides and Video Mahout Meet-up November 2011 San Francisco

Mahout in Action is not a textbook on machine learning. Rather, it is a practical approach to large data machine learning techniques with complete examples and guidance The goal is to enable the reader to apply Mahout to solve her or his own problems.

Wondering how to deal with huge requirements for speed and scale in your project? This book is for you.

Doing research in machine learning? This book is for you.

Leading a product team or start-up that needs cost-effective ways to scale solutions? This book is for you.

You're planning to become an active part of the Mahout community? This book is for you.

Three of the four authors of Mahout in Action are Apache Mahout committers who helped develop the Mahout project. Sean Owen wrote the first third of the book that focuses on recommendation. Robin Anil wrote the middle section that explains clustering applications using Apache Mahout. Ted Dunning, also a Mahout committer, co-wrote the final section of the book that explores the use of Mahout for classification projects with very large data sets. I am the other co-author of the classification section (Ellen Friedman). I'm a scientist and technical writer, but unlike the other three Mahout in Action authors, I am not a Mahout committer.

External Reviewers

One of the founders and core committers of Mahout, Grant Ingersoll, reviewed Mahout in Action at this link:

Mahout in Action Review

An in depth review of Mahout in Action in terms of how it covers data mining and how it explains Mahout in particular:

Tips and Tricks

For reviews of Mahout in Action by readers on Amazon, go to this link:

Amazon Reviews of Mahout in Action

See the little person sitting atop the elephant in the Mahout logo? What does it mean?

Mahout is an open source software library that uses Apache Hadoop among other techniques for scalable data mining. Hadoop's logo is a little yellow elephant.

So who drives an elephant to go further? The Indian term for the elephant's driver is the Mahout.

To visit Apache Mahout home page, use this link Apache Mahout

Sean was a Software Engineer with Google's Mobile Web search. He is a Mahout committer and an Apache Foundation V.P. Sean authored the recommendation section of Mahout in Action.

Robin works for Google, is a Mahout committer and authored the clustering section of the book Mahout in Action. You may enjoy following his blog:

Robin Anil's Blog

Update: Robin presented a workshop with Ted Dunning at OSCON meeting in Portland Oregon on July 25-29, 2011. See the slides at Hands On Mahout OSCON 2011Slides

Ted is Chief Application Architect at MapR Technologies. He is a committer and PMC member for the Apache Mahout project. Ted co-authored the classification section of Mahout In Action.

Ted's Blog is
Surprise and Coincidence: Musings from the Long Tail

Ted presented a workshop at OSCON in Portland Oregon on July 27-28, 2011 with Robin Anil. See slides at Hands On Mahout OSCON 2011Slides

UPDATE: New slides and video presentations from the first Mahout Meet Up held in San Francisco in November 2011 are available online. Presenters were Mahout co-founder and committer Grant Ingersoll and Mahout in Action author Ted Dunning. CLICK LINK to watch video or view slides:
Slides and Video Mahout Meet-up November 2011 San Francisco

Or meet Ted at one of the Bay Area Hadoop User Group meetings (HUG) or meeting of the ACM at which he is a frequent participant or speaker.

I wrote this not-un-biased review o f Mahout in Action, and as mentioned above, I am one of the four authors. I used to do laboratory research in molecular biology and biochemistry, and now I work on a variety of education, scientific and communications projects, including writing textbooks and evaluation of medical education.

Want to be active in the Mahout community? Do you have questions about Mahout? Why not join the discussion by jumping in?

Mahout Mailing List

JULY 2011: Two of the authors of Mahout in Action presented a hands-on workshop in Portland, Oregon on July 27, 2011 at the OSCON conference.

Ted Dunning and Robin Anil delivered a 90 minute workshop titled "Hands-on Mahout". For slides from the presentation,
CLICK THIS LINK: Hands On Mahout OSCON 2011Slides

Stay tuned for information about video from this session.

One of the authors of Mahout in Action was a keynote speaker at open source software conference Berlin BuzzWords 6 - 7 June 2011. The interactive keynote address was presented by Ted Dunning to an audience of about 400 key software developers involved with open source software projects such as those from the Apache Foundation.

Another keynote talk was given by Hadoop, Lucene and Avro developer Doug Cutting. Both addresses were enthusiastically received. The conference was a well-organized success.

Check Ted's blog for more on Hadoop, other Apache Foundation Software projects and keynote address see
Ted's Blog Surprise and Coincidence: Musings from the Long Tail