About the Book

A short

Video introduction

Watch this short video to hear me introduce the book. I talk more about my reasons for writing this book, what you can expect from it and why you should read it too.

From the cover

Why?

Reinforcement learning (RL) will deliver one of the biggest breakthroughs in AI over the next decade, enabling algorithms to learn from their environment to achieve arbitrary goals. This exciting development avoids constraints found in traditional machine learning (ML) algorithms. This practical book shows data science and AI professionals how to perform the reinforcement process that allows a machine to learn by itself.

From the cover

The content

Author Dr. Phil Winder of Winder.AI covers everything from basic building blocks to state-of-the-art practices. You’ll explore the current state of RL, focusing on industrial applications, and learn numerous algorithms, frameworks, and environments. This is no cookbook—it doesn’t shy away from math and expects familiarity with ML.

New edition

Now in Chinese!

O'Reilly and a very tenacious translator have rewritten the book in standard Chinese. If you're a native speaker then I recommend reading the Chinese edition of Reinforcement Learning.
Industrial
Learn what RL is and how the algorithms help solve problems
Fundamentals
Become grounded in RL fundamentals including Markov decision processes, dynamic programming, and temporal difference learning
Deep-dive
Dive deep into value methods and policy gradient methods
Apply
Apply advanced RL implementations such as meta learning, hierarchical learning, evolutionary algorithms, and imitation learning
State-of-the-art
Understand cutting-edge deep RL algorithms including Rainbow, PPO, TD3, SAC, and more
Examples
Get practical examples through the accompanying Git repository

Inside the Book

Here's what's inside the book. Over 350 pages of up-to-date RL experience, explained in simple terms.

Become a Reinforcement Learning Ninja

Written from the perspective of an industrial engineer, this book has everything you need to know to get started with reinforcement learning.

RL Algorithms

Learn about all major reinforcement learning algorithms in one place. This book covers all major types of RL algorithm.

Industrial Applications

Packed full of industrial use cases, you won’t be short of ideas. All examples are real (no hypotheticals here!) and have accompanying code.

Practical Advice

Complex models don’t need to be complicated. You will understand the pros and cons before accidents happen.

Experiments

Intuitive experiments to demonstrate the how and the why.

Easy Progression

Clear evolution of techniques from A/B testing to the state of the art.

Keep it Simple

Simple, concise language that packs in more content compared to other RL books.

Dr. Phil Winder

- CEO, Winder.AI

Dr. Phil Winder is a multidisciplinary Engineer who creates data-driven software products. His work incorporates Data Science, Cloud-Native and traditional software development using a range of languages and tools.

Phil is the CEO of Winder.AI, a Data Science consultancy in the UK, which operates throughout Europe delivering training, development and consultancy services. He has Ph.D. and a Masters degree in Electronics from the University of Hull, UK.