This book provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the principal machine learning methods, covering both supervised and unsupervised learning methods. It discusses essential methods of classification and regression in supervised learning, such as decision trees, perceptrons, support vector machines, maximum entropy models, logistic regression models and multiclass classification, as well as methods applied in supervised learning, like the hidden Markov model and conditional random fields. In the context of unsupervised learning, it examines clustering and other problems as well as methods such as singular value decomposition, principal component analysis and latent semantic analysis. As a fundamental book on machine learning, it addresses the needs of researchers and students who apply machine learning as an important tool in their research, especially those in fields such as information retrieval, natural language processing and text data mining. In order to understand the concepts and methods discussed, readers are expected to have an elementary knowledge of advanced mathematics, linear algebra and probability statistics. The detailed explanations of basic principles, underlying concepts and algorithms enable readers to grasp basic techniques, while the rigorous mathematical derivations and specific examples included offer valuable insights into machine learning.

This volume contains the papers selected for presentation at The 2009 Inter- tional Conference on Brain Informatics (BI 2009) held at Beijing University of Technology, China, on October 22-24, 2009. It was organized by the Web Int- ligence Consortium (WIC) and IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Task Force on Brain Informatics (IEEE TF-BI). The conference was held jointly with The 2009 International Conference on Active Media Technology (AMT 2009). Brain informatics (BI) has emergedas an interdisciplinaryresearch?eld that focuses on studying the mechanisms underlying the human information proce- ing system (HIPS). It investigates the essential functions of the brain, ranging from perception to thinking, and encompassing such areas as multi-perception, attention,memory,language,computation,heuristicsearch,reasoning,planning, decision-making, problem-solving, learning, discovery, and creativity. The goal of BI is to develop and demonstrate a systematic approach to achieving an integrated understanding of both macroscopic and microscopic level working principles of the brain, by means of experimental, computational, and cognitive neuroscience studies, as well as utilizing advanced Web Intelligence (WI) centric information technologies. BI represents a potentially revolutionary shift in the way that research is undertaken. It attempts to capture new forms of c- laborative and interdisciplinary work. Following this vision, new kinds of BI methods and global research communities will emerge, through infrastructure on the wisdom Web and knowledge grids that enables high speed and d- tributed, large-scale analysis and computations, and radically new ways of sh- ing data/knowledge.