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Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#61
post #2

If you want to jump right in with "hello world" type TensorFlow (a tool for machine learning), see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12465935 (how to fit a straight line using TensorFlow) If you like to study/read: the famous Coursera Andrew Ng machine learning course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning If you just want course materials from UC Berkeley, here's their 101 course: https://news.ycombinat…

What is a good "hello world" project for machine learning? That is, what problem can I solve or question can I answer with minimal ceremony, and ideally with multiple techniques / technologies so that I can compare them? Is it this house price estimation like in your last link, or is there something better than that?

The Iris data set [1] is very famous and a popular way to test out classification techniques. It's not "big data", but can be used to familiarize yourself with some basic data mining techniques.

[1] – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_flower_data_set

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#62
post #2

If you want to jump right in with "hello world" type TensorFlow (a tool for machine learning), see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12465935 (how to fit a straight line using TensorFlow) If you like to study/read: the famous Coursera Andrew Ng machine learning course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning If you just want course materials from UC Berkeley, here's their 101 course: https://news.ycombinat…

What is a good "hello world" project for machine learning? That is, what problem can I solve or question can I answer with minimal ceremony, and ideally with multiple techniques / technologies so that I can compare them? Is it this house price estimation like in your last link, or is there something better than that?

Kaggle has a number of starter challenges. See https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic for one related to predicting the survival of passengers on the Titanic.

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#63
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a good "hello world" project for machine learning? That is, what problem can I solve or question can I answer with minimal ceremony, and ideally with multiple techniques / technologies so that I can compare them? Is it this house price estimation like in your last link, or is there something better than that?

Kaggle has a number of starter challenges. See https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic for one related to predicting the survival of passengers on the Titanic.

Nice, that is a great pointer.

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#64
post #31

DON'T LEARN NEURAL NETWORKS FIRST. Instead, learn decision trees and more importantly enough statistics so you aren't dangerous. Do you know what the central limit theorem is and why it is important? Can you do 5-fold cross validation on a random forest model in your choice of tool? Fine, now you are ready to do deep learning stuff. The reason I say not to do neural networks first is because they aren't very effectiv…

Thanks. Can you recommend any statistics books to be safe?

"Introduction to probability" is amazing. It really set the bar for what an academic book could be https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Probability-Chapman-Stat...

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#65
post #60

I took the summer off to learn enough ML to transition from a career in software engineering & product / leadership type roles to ML. I suggest for a first round learning practical tools and techniques so you can start applying supervised learning techniques right away while also starting to build a more solid foundation in probability & statistics for future deeper understanding of the field. I've written about my c…

That's a great curriculum, thanks for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#66
It depends on what your goals are. If you'd like to become an ML Engineer or Data Scientist, Tensorflow should be last thing you learn. First, develop a solid foundation in linear algebra and statistics. Then, familiarize yourself with a nice ML toolkit like Scikit-Learn and The Elements of Statistical Learning (which is free online). The rest is a distraction.

In addition to the linear algebra and statistics MOOCS mentioned, I'll also add:

* No bullshit guide to Linear Algebra: https://gumroad.com/l/noBSLA

* Statistical Models: Theory and Practice: https://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Models-Practice-David-Fre...

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#67

Newton's method and other numerical methods are the hello world of machine learning. Why numerical methods? * They might produce the right answer * They frequently do * They are easy to visualize or imagine * You get used to working with a routine that is both fallible but quite simple and remarkably able to work in a wide variety of situations. This is what machine learning does, but there are more sophisticated rou…

> Newton's method and other numerical methods are the hello world of machine learning. Newton's method and other similar numerical methods are the hello world of a branch of mathematics known as 'numerical analysis' and scientific computing. This is not Machine Learning.

ShhhHHHhhhhhhh! I'm tricking the questioner into learning some math.

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#69
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a good "hello world" project for machine learning? That is, what problem can I solve or question can I answer with minimal ceremony, and ideally with multiple techniques / technologies so that I can compare them? Is it this house price estimation like in your last link, or is there something better than that?

Kaggle has a number of starter challenges. See https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic for one related to predicting the survival of passengers on the Titanic.

Lol. Predicting the survival of passengers on the Titanic is meaningless and misleading - there is literally no connection to reality, despite the framing of the task which suggests a certain connection. There is absolutely nothing that could be predicted. It is just a simulation of oversimplified model which describes nothing, but an oversimplified view of a historical event. It is as meaningless as the ant simulator written by Rich Hickey to demonstrate features of Clojure - it has that much connection to real ants.

Re: Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?

#70
This link appeared on HN a few days ago:

https://github.com/ZuzooVn/machine-learning-for-software-eng...

Has some great links if you already have some knowledge about software engineering and want to get into Machine Learning

Josh Gordon from Google also has a extremely nice handson "how to start with Machine Learning" course on YouTube featuring scikit-learn and TensorFlow:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOU2XLYxmsIIuiBfYad6r...

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