I like my tech and math with history. Knowing where the ideas came from and what previous, wrong ideas they had to beat out is valuable in understanding them. (

I like my tech and math with history. Knowing where the ideas came from and what previous, wrong ideas they had to beat out is valuable in understanding them. (Plus it reminds you that maybe your new ideas could be the next thing.) But the full book (this is an excerpt) is more caught up in its time that I would have liked - a lot of it seems to be arguing against critics. You probably don't really need such an exhaustive treatment. In contrast, Norvig's AIMA book has a chapter on the subject (bayes nets) which is confident and compact. Start there. Still I like this book and have recommended it.