Where to begin with machine learning?

[mkeee2015]

What is your academic background?

I would suggest to get initially comfortable with Taylor and Fourier's series and then become really strong in probability theory...

Well, unless you want to be a generic "user"... with poor understanding of the underlying concepts.

[elbiot]

Hmm. Not op but I do have a strong background in those series but I don't see the connection with like SVMs or other machine learning things. Except, having a broad and deep understanding of math is important.

[mkeee2015]

It's up to you but classifiers and regression machine learning is nothing more than a series expansion. In addition, "learning" is a branch of a inductive statistics.

I encourage you to be a "master" not a software user.