This document provides an introduction to Apache Spark and machine learning. It discusses what Apache Spark is, how it compares to other big data frameworks, and the Spark program lifecycle. It also defines what big data is and where it comes from. Additionally, it discusses data science goals of deriving knowledge from big data efficiently and intelligently, and provides examples of machine learning applications. Finally, it includes two coding examples - one involving text analysis on Shakespeare's works, and another involving movie recommendations from movie rating data.