[chromophore]

Agree with you Paras!

Shubhendu here by the way! :)

I was taken aback a little by the suggestion to use the UCI repository with R for beginning ML.

I would agree with your approach, I learnt all my basics from Andrew Ng's course and his course more or less follows what you said. :)

[chromophore]

And I prefer the book by Bishop, It strikes a fine balance between the maths and the ideas.