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Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

fast.ai

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Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#31

Post by j_s »

jph00 wrote: post #7
daedalus13 wrote: post #6

jph00, I found the first course hard to follow because of some broken links and poorly organized content. One link that was necessary kept taking me to a password protected page. This is about a month ago. It would be good if someone could revisit part.1 and make those minor editorial fixes if they haven't already done so. I might be being too precious about my time, but I also found the first video about your teachi…

The move from platform.ai to files.fast.ai could have been communicated better - sorry this impacted you. (We tried to highlight everywhere we could, but we can't change the video itself on YouTube unfortunately.) We're redoing the whole of part 1 starting in October so this problem will be fully resolved then. Until then, follow the links on course.fast.ai or the forums, rather than what you see in the part 1 videos…

You can add annotations to the videos with the right links, right?

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#32

Post by adam12 »

metafunctor wrote: post #24

Part 1 was great. However, the first lesson took a bit of stamina to go through. Much of it was introducing basic Unix/AWS/shell/Python things I know intimately and have strong opinions and deeply set ways about. Shell aliases, how to use AWS, what Python distribution to run, running Python from some crazy web tool called notebooks (and not Emacs), etc. felt like I was forced to learn a random selection of randomly f…

I started watching the videos in Part 1 and was disappointed to find out that I was going to have to create an AWS account. I really don't want to deal with accidentally racking up a large bill on AWS.

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#33

Post by metafunctor »

adam12 wrote: post #32
metafunctor wrote: post #24

Part 1 was great. However, the first lesson took a bit of stamina to go through. Much of it was introducing basic Unix/AWS/shell/Python things I know intimately and have strong opinions and deeply set ways about. Shell aliases, how to use AWS, what Python distribution to run, running Python from some crazy web tool called notebooks (and not Emacs), etc. felt like I was forced to learn a random selection of randomly f…

I started watching the videos in Part 1 and was disappointed to find out that I was going to have to create an AWS account. I really don't want to deal with accidentally racking up a large bill on AWS.

If you have the hardware, you can do without an AWS account (you might need to be an "expert" to interpret the instructions to run on your own hardware instead of AWS). I used my gaming rig with a 1080 GTX Ti card.

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#34

Post by jph00 »

learner101 wrote: post #28
metafunctor wrote: post #24

Part 1 was great. However, the first lesson took a bit of stamina to go through. Much of it was introducing basic Unix/AWS/shell/Python things I know intimately and have strong opinions and deeply set ways about. Shell aliases, how to use AWS, what Python distribution to run, running Python from some crazy web tool called notebooks (and not Emacs), etc. felt like I was forced to learn a random selection of randomly f…

I come from the opposite side of the spectrum. I know nothing about UNIX/AWS/Shell and have no intimate or strong opinions on any of the tools. I am confused by basics such as how to make a special request for P2 access, since the set up video is out of date. The git cloning recommendations on the wiki is also confusing to me. I'd rather see a video on how to do the git cloning or step-by-step instructions (with pict…

We (including the rest of the learning community) would love to help you - could you post on the forums the problems you are having and we'll try to help sort them out? If you've already posted, please at-mention me there so I don't miss it.

It's a fine line between helping too much vs too little in lesson 1! For the next time we run part 1, we're thinking we'll have an optional weekend workshop to teach the necessary (non deep learning specific) software pieces - python, numpy, AWS, shell, etc. That would end up being a separate mini-MOOC I suspect.

Based on the discussions on the forums it seems most students are between these two extremes, and largely follow the video advice, branching off sometimes where they need to do some additional research, or are already familiar with some alternative approach.

Edit: actually thinking more about it - probably your best bet is to simply use http://crestle.com . All the data, notebooks, and software is pre-installed, so you can start coding right away.

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#35

Post by jph00 »

j_s wrote: post #31
jph00 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move from platform.ai to files.fast.ai could have been communicated better - sorry this impacted you. (We tried to highlight everywhere we could, but we can't change the video itself on YouTube unfortunately.) We're redoing the whole of part 1 starting in October so this problem will be fully resolved then. Until then, follow the links on course.fast.ai or the forums, rather than what you see in the part 1 videos…

You can add annotations to the videos with the right links, right?

Apparently they're getting rid of annotations.

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#36

Post by jph00 »

metafunctor wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be worth it to do an updated version of course #1 at some point, many of the examples will not work now if you try to follow along with the video because libraries (for example Keras) have been changed or upgraded. (I know you have plenty to do, so really no pressure, this is simply a nice to have for newcomers that 'tuned in late'.)

Earlier this year, the lessons stopped working for a while because the setup scripts ended up installing Keras 2, but the code was built for Keras 1.2. I was bitten by this in March, but I've been told everything works fine now (the setup scripts now use Keras 1.2 specifically). Upgrading the lessons to Keras 2 is of course nice; I wonder if the videos will need to be re-recorded for that?

Yup they'll be re-recorded. Many updates to cover, not just keras 2!

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#37

Post by cakedoggie »

metafunctor wrote: post #33
adam12 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started watching the videos in Part 1 and was disappointed to find out that I was going to have to create an AWS account. I really don't want to deal with accidentally racking up a large bill on AWS.

If you have the hardware, you can do without an AWS account (you might need to be an "expert" to interpret the instructions to run on your own hardware instead of AWS). I used my gaming rig with a 1080 GTX Ti card.

Why? Why can't I just do it with my crappy hardware, and it take longer?

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#39

Post by colmvp »

My feelings on Part 1:

I felt like the setup of the first part was at time a little frustrating, since I started it during a time when Keras had switched to a newer version which wasn't compatible some of the utility code that was written. Add this to the newbie factor to notebooks, and it was a pretty rough first week or so to setup and get actual learning done. It took me a bit of time to realize notebooks were more like repeatable trains of thoughts than well-written production code.

The other thing is that some of the supplementary material was really long and at times made me feel like, why take this course instead of just going through a course mentioned in supplementary material (e.g. CS231n wrt CNN's)? I think I ended up spending hundreds of hours reading/watching/practicing CNN's by reading papers, watching Karpathy's 231n videos, and doing a couple tutorials from data scientists who elaborated on a specific problem they were solving. I guess at times when watching Part 1's videos and doing the notebooks, I didn't feel like I was 'getting it' as much or as fast as when I was getting the information from other means.

While the forum discussions can be helpful, it was also wadding through a ton of unstructured content. And the service they used for the forums hotmapped the find shortcut to their own built-in search, which was a little annoying. I don't know a great solution to having more structured data, but perhaps adding some of questions that were answered to the lesson's Wikipedia. Or maybe splitting the technical issues from the high level concepts.

Lastly, I think it was either HN or /r/MachineLearning but someone had suggested a book regarding Machine Learning and hands-on Tensorflow usage which I picked up, and I felt like my pace of learning really sped up afterwards. I think part of it was Tensorflow has a lot more written about it so when you encounter an odd problem, chances are someone else has something to say about it.

All criticisms aside, I think I'll try going through Part 1 a second time around prior to going through Part 2.

Re: Deep Learning for Coders – Launching Deep Learning Part 2

#40

Post by j_s »

jph00 wrote: post #35
j_s wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can add annotations to the videos with the right links, right?

Apparently they're getting rid of annotations.

Ok then cards or whatever annotations have been replaced by, but something!

https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/cards

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