A few useful things to know about machine learning

Pedro Domingos, A Few Useful Things to Know About Machine Learning, Communications of the ACM, 2012, Vol. 55, No. 10, Pages 78-87.

This article summarizes 12 key lessons that machine learning researchers and practitioners have learned. These include pitfalls to avoid, important issues to focus on, and answers to common questions. 

Table 1 The three components of learning algorithms.

Learning = Representation + Evaluation + Optimization 

This is a nice overview article which could be assigned as an entry-level course reading. For a teacher, you could cover these topics or provide enough background material in your course so that the students could explore the content by themselves.