Unfortunately the author begins by citing the fraud Taleb. After that I have to doubly examine everything he writes for signs of subtle nonsense, and its just necessary to close the tab.
Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
51–56 of 56 posts
Re: Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
#52I think this "machine learning for hackers" approach is just not enough. Oftentimes, you do need a solid theoretical/mathematical background. Most people seems to approach ML like they approach programming tools or libraries - learn just enough to get job done and move on. I was studying machine learning from Andrew Ng's CS229 (the class videos are online. I think they date from 2008 or hereabout). There is no way yo…
Everytime there is a paradigm shift there is always that voice: If you don't understand the paint at a chemical compound level you can't make a beautiful painting. Wait what?
Well, most states won't let me practice as an engineer, even if I get really good at Solidworks from watching YouTube videos, because I have no background in the field.
Re: Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is about both. Machines AND learning.
It is about data and algorithms and if calling them machines and learning or cognition or intution or thinking or whatever makes you happy then no body can stop you from doing so.
You might want to look up the definition of 'learning' from Arthur Samuel / Tom Mitchell. That might help you in your confusion.
Re: Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
#54I have an almost opposite problem. I spent years learning alot of ML stuff and worked at a job doing this kind of work for a couple years or so. I think the issue was that the data we had at the organization and the internal politics seemed to make it difficult to use for ML in a way that mattered to the business. I grew frustrated with having spent alot of time learning things that were exciting then realizing it di…
I agree. Most of what I've seen suggests that everyone _thinks_ they need and want machine learning specialists. But mostly they need people who are flexible in how they combine business acumen with statistics, a little ML, analysis, and programming. Business owners usually insist they need the ML soooo much, but they're rarely willing to go all the way and actually deploy ML. Plus, often they don't really need it...Or even modeling of any sort. They may need automated dashboards (for keeping an eye on important KPIs), decision support platforms, etc... Lots of things which require something more than analysts, statisticians, programmers, and the like. In essence they need highly capable jack-of-all-trades who can, on occasion, bring to bear advanced algorithms and stats. But that's a lot more rare than you'd be led to believe given job postings and all the news articles.
Re: Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
#55I think this "machine learning for hackers" approach is just not enough. Oftentimes, you do need a solid theoretical/mathematical background. Most people seems to approach ML like they approach programming tools or libraries - learn just enough to get job done and move on. I was studying machine learning from Andrew Ng's CS229 (the class videos are online. I think they date from 2008 or hereabout). There is no way yo…
If you are a hacker, you tend to be more driven towards learning techniques (ML, DL etc) to solve a problem at hand rather than just learning a technique and then hunting for a problem which can be solved with it. For example, my motivation for learning ML & any associated statistical methods went through the roof when confronted with a problem of figuring out a better way to identify & predict which devices (from a huge set) would go bust largely based on available indicators like power drain etc. I wouldn't have made the effort to read a bunch of papers & watch relevant videos if I didn't have a problem to solve. Maybe that happens if you've been a code-monkey for 20+ years.
Re: Learning Machine Learning: A beginner's journey
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everytime there is a paradigm shift there is always that voice: If you don't understand the paint at a chemical compound level you can't make a beautiful painting. Wait what?
Eh, let's revise that analogy. More like not understanding the bricks means you can't make a good building. You can by good intuition, but it won't be spot-on perfect (as by calculating all the physics) and you'll need more luck the higher you get.
I do take your point. I guess i'm just trying to say i've had good success just diving in head first and working backwards :)