If you want a thorough explanation of concepts (as opposed to the 'black box' 'use this library' approach taken by many tutorials I've seen) then I highly recom

If you want a thorough explanation of concepts (as opposed to the 'black box' 'use this library' approach taken by many tutorials I've seen) then I highly recommend John Foreman's (Data Scientist at MailChimp) book "Data Smart". He implements algorithms on practical problems in Excel. I know that may sound off-putting but it's so much easier to visualise what's going on when you can see vectors of data change in a spreadsheet compared to trying to debug arrays in a more general programming language. What led me to John - something I heard about here actually - was his blog called 'Analytics Made Skeezy' where he creates fictional 'drug dealer' GTA style examples such as "Forecasting Made Skeezy: Projecting Meth Demand using Exponential Smoothing" http://analyticsmadeskeezy.com/blog/ http://analyticsmadeskeezy.com/blog/ I have no affiliation with John, just liked the blog enough to order his book and the book was excellent too Good luck! :)