This book is a useful textbook for graduate students and is a reference book for researchers and machine learning and big data practitioners who want to know how to deal with large amounts of data and the main problems that arise in both the development of predictive models and the application of machine learning algorithms. It covers fundamental modern topics in machine learning and describes several key aspects of the application of algorithms. The book is focused on credit risk and the financial crisis, so it could also be interesting for researchers in that field.