Introduction to XGBoost

A Gentle Introduction to XGBoost for Applied Machine Learning
by Jason Brownlee on August 17, 2016

XGBoost is an algorithm that has recently been dominating applied machine learning and Kaggle competitions for structured or tabular data.

XGBoost is an implementation of gradient boosted decision trees designed for speed and performance.

In this post you will discover XGBoost and get a gentle introduction to what is, where it came from and how you can learn more.

After reading this post you will know:

What XGBoost is and the goals of the project.
Why XGBoost must be a part of your machine learning toolkit.
Where you can learn more to start using XGBoost on your next machine learning project. Let’s get started.