The idea about this book has evolved during the process of its preparation as some of the results have been achieved in parallel with its writing. One reason for this is that in this area of research results are very quickly updated. Another is, possibly, that a strong, unchallenged theoretical basis in this field still does not fully exist. From other hand, the rate of innovation, competition and demand from different branches of industry (from biotech industry to civil and building engineering, from market forecasting to civil aviation, from robotics to emerging e-commerce) is increasingly pressing for more customised solutions based on learning consumers behaviour. A highly interdisciplinary and rapidly innovating field is forming which focus is the design of intelligent, self-adapting systems and machines. It is on the crossroads of control theory, artificial and computational intelligence, different engineering disciplines borrowing heavily from the biology and life sciences. It is often called intelligent control, soft computing or intelligent technology. Some other branches have appeared recently like intelligent agents (which migrated from robotics to different engineering fields), data fusion, knowledge extraction etc., which are inherently related to this field. The core is the attempts to enhance the abilities of the classical control theory in order to have more adequate, flexible, and adaptive models and control algorithms.

This book provides a 'one-stop source' for all readers who are interested in a new, empirical approach to machine learning that, unlike traditional methods, successfully addresses the demands of today's data-driven world. After an introduction to the fundamentals, the book discusses in depth anomaly detection, data partitioning and clustering, as well as classification and predictors. It describes classifiers of zero and first order, and the new, highly efficient and transparent deep rule-based classifiers, particularly highlighting their applications to image processing. Local optimality and stability conditions for the methods presented are formally derived and stated, while the software is also provided as supplemental, open-source material. The book will greatly benefit postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners dealing with advanced data processing, applied mathematicians, software developers of agent-oriented systems, and developers of embedded and real-time systems. It can also be used as a textbook for postgraduate coursework; for this purpose, a standalone set of lecture notes and corresponding lab session notes are available on the same website as the code. Dimitar Filev, Henry Ford Technical Fellow, Ford Motor Company, USA, and Member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA: "The book Empirical Approach to Machine Learning opens new horizons to automated and efficient data processing." Paul J. Werbos, Inventor of the back-propagation method, USA: "I owe great thanks to Professor Plamen Angelov for making this important material available to the community just as I see great practical needs for it, in the new area of making real sense of high-speed data from the brain." Chin-Teng Lin, Distinguished Professor at University of Technology Sydney, Australia: "This new book will set up a milestone for the modern intelligent systems." Edward Tunstel, President of IEEE Systems, Man, Cybernetics Society, USA: "Empirical Approach to Machine Learning provides an insightful and visionary boost of progress in the evolution of computational learning capabilities yielding interpretable and transparent implementations."

The idea about this book has evolved during the process of its preparation as some of the results have been achieved in parallel with its writing. One reason for this is that in this area of research results are very quickly updated. Another is, possibly, that a strong, unchallenged theoretical basis in this field still does not fully exist. From other hand, the rate of innovation, competition and demand from different branches of industry (from biotech industry to civil and building engineering, from market forecasting to civil aviation, from robotics to emerging e-commerce) is increasingly pressing for more customised solutions based on learning consumers behaviour. A highly interdisciplinary and rapidly innovating field is forming which focus is the design of intelligent, self-adapting systems and machines. It is on the crossroads of control theory, artificial and computational intelligence, different engineering disciplines borrowing heavily from the biology and life sciences. It is often called intelligent control, soft computing or intelligent technology. Some other branches have appeared recently like intelligent agents (which migrated from robotics to different engineering fields), data fusion, knowledge extraction etc., which are inherently related to this field. The core is the attempts to enhance the abilities of the classical control theory in order to have more adequate, flexible, and adaptive models and control algorithms.

This book provides a 'one-stop source' for all readers who are interested in a new, empirical approach to machine learning that, unlike traditional methods, successfully addresses the demands of today's data-driven world. After an introduction to the fundamentals, the book discusses in depth anomaly detection, data partitioning and clustering, as well as classification and predictors. It describes classifiers of zero and first order, and the new, highly efficient and transparent deep rule-based classifiers, particularly highlighting their applications to image processing. Local optimality and stability conditions for the methods presented are formally derived and stated, while the software is also provided as supplemental, open-source material. The book will greatly benefit postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners dealing with advanced data processing, applied mathematicians, software developers of agent-oriented systems, and developers of embedded and real-time systems. It can also be used as a textbook for postgraduate coursework; for this purpose, a standalone set of lecture notes and corresponding lab session notes are available on the same website as the code. Dimitar Filev, Henry Ford Technical Fellow, Ford Motor Company, USA, and Member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA: "The book Empirical Approach to Machine Learning opens new horizons to automated and efficient data processing." Paul J. Werbos, Inventor of the back-propagation method, USA: "I owe great thanks to Professor Plamen Angelov for making this important material available to the community just as I see great practical needs for it, in the new area of making real sense of high-speed data from the brain." Chin-Teng Lin, Distinguished Professor at University of Technology Sydney, Australia: "This new book will set up a milestone for the modern intelligent systems." Edward Tunstel, President of IEEE Systems, Man, Cybernetics Society, USA: "Empirical Approach to Machine Learning provides an insightful and visionary boost of progress in the evolution of computational learning capabilities yielding interpretable and transparent implementations."