My favorite books about applied deep learning

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been working in machine learning for about a decade. I’ve always been more interested in applied than theoretical problems and while blogs and MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) are a great way to learn, for certain deep topics only a book would do. I also teach at University of Oxford, University of Birmingham, and various FTSE100 companies. My machine learning has exposed me to many fascinating problems—from leading my own ML-focused startup through Y Combinator—to working at various companies as a consultant. I think there is currently no great curriculum for the practitioners really wanting to apply deep learning in practical cases, so I have given it my best shot.


I wrote...

GANs in Action: Deep Learning with Generative Adversarial Networks

By Jakub Langr, Vladimir Bok,

Book cover of GANs in Action: Deep Learning with Generative Adversarial Networks

What is my book about?

GANs in Action teaches you how to build and train your own Generative Adversarial Networks, one of the most important innovations in deep learning. In this book, you'll learn how to start building your own simple adversarial system as you explore the foundation of GAN architecture: the generator and discriminator networks.

Generative Adversarial Networks, GANs, are an incredible AI technology capable of creating images, sound, and videos that are indistinguishable from the "real thing." By pitting two neural networks against each other—one to generate fakes and one to spot them—GANs rapidly learn to produce photo-realistic faces and other media objects. With the potential to produce stunningly realistic animations or shocking deepfakes, GANs are a huge step forward in deep learning systems.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Deep Learning with Python

Jakub Langr Why did I love this book?

This is a fantastic book to get you started. It is written by the author of a leading deep learning framework Keras, which makes even Tensorflow very easy to use. Chollet is a true leader of the deep learning craft and the Manning team always does an excellent job of forcing authors to make the subject matter accessible. Highly recommended!

By Francois Chollet,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Deep Learning with Python as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The first edition of Deep Learning with Python is one of the best books on the subject. The second edition made it even better." - Todd Cook

The bestseller revised! Deep Learning with Python, Second Edition is a comprehensive introduction to the field of deep learning using Python and the powerful Keras library. Written by Google AI researcher Francois Chollet, the creator of Keras, this revised edition has been updated with new chapters, new tools, and cutting-edge techniques drawn from the latest research. You'll build your understanding through practical examples and intuitive explanations that make the complexities of deep learning…


Book cover of Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and Pytorch: AI Applications Without a PhD

Jakub Langr Why did I love this book?

Jeremy Howard is the lead author and has always been a world-class educator. This book is based on his fast.ai course, which has managed to splice all rigor, simplicity, and cutting edge techniques into one course. It also uses its custom fast.ai framework built on PyTorch, which is the dominant language for researchers. This book is very practically oriented and gets you off the ground very quickly with your own projects!

By Jeremy Howard, Sylvain Gugger,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and Pytorch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Deep learning is often viewed as the exclusive domain of math PhDs and big tech companies. But as this hands-on guide demonstrates, programmers comfortable with Python can achieve impressive results in deep learning with little math background, small amounts of data, and minimal code. How? With fastai, the first library to provide a consistent interface to the most frequently used deep learning applications.

Authors Jeremy Howard and Sylvain Gugger, the creators of fastai, show you how to train a model on a wide range of tasks using fastai and PyTorch. You'll also dive progressively further into deep learning theory to…


Book cover of How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business

Jakub Langr Why did I love this book?

While technically not about deep learning, this book is fantastic for those interested in pursuing applied or practical machine learning problems. While the central thesis of a topic can be reduced to “Frequently, models are valuable simply by reducing uncertainty,” it is definitely worth a read as there’s a lot of deep thinking in this book!

By Douglas W. Hubbard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How to Measure Anything as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now updated with new measurement methods and new examples, How to Measure Anything shows managers how to inform themselves in order to make less risky, more profitable business decisions This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered "immeasurable," including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI. * Adds new measurement methods, showing how they can be applied to a variety of areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction * Simplifies overall content while still making the…


Book cover of Deep Learning

Jakub Langr Why did I love this book?

This is a very technical, truly academic book. I’d recommend reading it 4th or 5th if you felt that prior books did not have sufficient rigour. While this book is academic, it has been lauded by many for its clarity. This is a great book to really think about fundamentals and see what sorts of things can go wrong—even in applied settings.

By Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Deep Learning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An introduction to a broad range of topics in deep learning, covering mathematical and conceptual background, deep learning techniques used in industry, and research perspectives.

“Written by three experts in the field, Deep Learning is the only comprehensive book on the subject.”
—Elon Musk, cochair of OpenAI; cofounder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

Deep learning is a form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts. Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all…


Book cover of Grokking Deep Learning

Jakub Langr Why did I love this book?

This book is a fantastic intro to someone who really wants to intuitively understand deep learning. It can help you clear up things where you are stuck or simply if you’re having trouble explaining parts of your algorithm to your business stakeholders. It is also a really good preparation if you want a really solid, practical basis to come up with new tweaks or types of models.

By Andrew W. Trask,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Grokking Deep Learning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Artificial Intelligence is the most exciting technology of the century, and Deep Learning is, quite literally, the "brain" behind the world's smartest Artificial Intelligence systems out there.


Grokking Deep Learning is the perfect place to begin the deep learning journey. Rather than just learning the "black box" API of some library or framework, readers will actually understand how to build these algorithms completely from scratch.



Key Features:
Build neural networks that can see and understand images
Build an A.I. that will learn to defeat you in a classic Atari game
Hands-on Learning


Written for readers with high school-level math and…


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