[defphysics]

Personally, I prefer Bishop (Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning) or Murphy (Probabilistic Machine Learning: An Introduction).

[PheonixPharts]

It's worth noting that neither of those books contain any code at all.

I suppose that's what makes the ISLA being translated such a big deal. A sufficiently advanced student in ML/Statistical modeling doesn't really need code at all since it should be fairly trivial to translate the mathematical models into computational ones, and the ability to do so is a prerequisite to understanding these models in the first place.

[dunefox]

Those books are in a completely different ballpark.

[antegamisou]

Those are what most universities around the world use for their introductory machine learning courses.

[lysecret]

If you want more depth have you looked at the Elements from the same author ? This book is intended for beginners.

[craigching]

ISL is a more introductory book than Bishop or Murphy. There's no reason not to read all of them, they're all excellent books that cover different topics. I'd also throw in Elements of Statistical Learning from the same authors as ISL(R/P). I've read ISL, ESL, and Bishop, started Murphy but didn't finish it (no real reason, just lost track of it when I got busy). I highly recommend any and all of these texts.

[StefanWestfal]

I heard good things about Bishop however I am a SE that would like do know more about what the ML team is doing and maybe work on some ML side projects. Would you recommend Bishop here or is it considerer to theoretical for such a case?

[craigching]

Bishop is going to be more theoretical than ISL. It is true that Bishop is taught as an introduction to ML in many universities, but if you want more hands on to start with, ISL is an excellent option. There is another text called "Elements of Statistical Learning" that pairs well with ISL for a more theoretical treatment. I haven't looked at ESL in a long time, the only concern I'd have is if they aren't covering some introductory deep learning topics. Most of ISL, ESL, and Bishop are more traditional machine learning, covering a wide variety of algorithms, so bear that in mind.