Machine learning is the key to unlocking the potential of big data. By combining machine learning with big data and Hadoop-based applications, it is now possible to monitor massive amounts of data faster than ever before. This list of Machine Learning's Top 20 influencers charts Twitter's most-read authors on the topic during 2015.

1.
By
Tom
Howells,
Staff
Writer,
Fraud
&
Technology
Wire
Jan
8,
2016
In
our
short
series
last
year,
we
outlined
how
machine
learning
can
be
used
to
detect
new,
never
before
seen
types
of
fraud.
By
combining
machine
learning
with
big
data
and
Hadoop,
it
is
now
possible
to
monitor
massive
amounts
of
data
in
real
time
and
detect
anomalies
faster
than
ever
before.
To
create
this
list
of
machine
learning
influencers,
we
used
the
Twitter
application
LittleBird.
The
app
has
a
feature
called
insiders,
which
calculates
how
connected
a
Twitter
user
is
in
regards
to
particular
topics.
It
rates
insiders
based
on
how
many
of
the
other
insiders
follow
that
individual.
Here
are
the
top
machine
learning
influencers
of
2015:
Rank
Name
Twitter
Handle
Followers
Company
1
Andrew
Ng
@andrewyng
46.1K
Chief
Scientist,
Baidu
Inc.
2
Hilary
Mason
@hmason
66.8K
Founder,
Fast
Forward
Labs
3
Yann
LeCun
@ylecun
13.6K
Director
of
AI
Research,
Facebook
4
Andrej
Karpathy
@karpathy
13.7K
Computer
Science
PhD
Student,
Stanford
5
Gregory
Piatetsky
@kdnuggets
45.9K
President,
KDnuggets
6
Kirk
Borne
@kirkdborne
54.4K
Principal
Data
Scientist,
Booz
Allen
Hamilton
7
Olivier
Grisel
@ogrisel
12.6K
Software
Engineer,
Inria
8
Randy
Olson
@randal_olson
78.3K
Postdoctoral
researcher,
UPenn
9
John
Myles
White
@johnmyleswhite
14.3K
Scientist,
Facebook
10
Peter
Skomoroch
@peteskomoroch
27K
Startup
Co-­‐Founder
and
CEO
11
Andreas
Mueller
@t3kcit
7.1K
Assistant
Research
Scientist,
NYU
12
Ben
Lorica
@bigdata
29.3K
Chief
Data
Scientist,
O’Reilly
Media
13
Jeff
@hackingdata
24.5K
Founder,
Cloudera

2. Hammerbacher
14
Wes
McKinney
@wesmckinn
14K
Software
Engineer,
Cloudera
15
Richard
Socher
@RichardSocher
4.5K
CEO,
Metamind
16
Ryan
Rosario
@datajunkie
12.8K
Statistics
PhD
Candidate,
UCLA
17
Drew
Conway
@drewconway
14.8K
Founder
and
CEO,
Alluvium
18
Nando
de
Freitas
@NandoDF
4.1K
Deep
Mind
Scientist,
Google
19
David
Smith
@revodavid
17.8K
R
Community
Lead,
Microsoft
20
Fei-­‐Fei
Li
@drfeifei
5.2K
Professor
of
Computer
Science,
Stanford
Graphic:
LittleBird’s
graphical
representation
of
how
influencers
are
connected
to
each
other
shows
that
they
can
be
broken
into
different
communities.
The
turquoise
cluster
connects
people
involved
in
machine
learning
at
research
universities,
the
magenta
cluster
is
focused
around
San
Francisco,
while
the
gold
cluster
is
split
between
London
and
San
Francisco.