Hui Li developed a flow for determining appropriate machine learning algorithms:
Since the cheat sheet is designed for beginner data scientists and analysts, we will make some simplified assumptions when talking about the algorithms.
The algorithms recommended here result from compiled feedback and tips from several data scientists and machine learning experts and developers. There are several issues on which we have not reached an agreement and for these issues we try to highlight the commonality and reconcile the difference.
Additional algorithms will be added in later as our library grows to encompass a more complete set of available methods.
Read the whole thing.