On the state of the art in Machine Learning: a personal review

This paper reviews a number of recent books related to current developments in machine learning. Some (anticipated) trends will be sketched. These include: a trend towards combining approaches that were hitherto regarded as distinct and were studied by separate research communities; a trend towards a more prominent role of representation; and a tighter integration of machine learning techniques with techniques from areas of application such as bioinformatics. The intended readership has some knowledge of what machine learning is about, but brief tutorial introductions to some of the more specialist research areas will also be given.