I haven't had a lot of time to look at the offering, but can anybody tell me if these courses have any theory, or are they just for promoting specific AWS ML services without going into the underlying complexity?
Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
21–30 of 109 posts
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it might be true for certain products. But I find it funny how they recommend me my phone or my laptop. Those aren't things you usually buy in bulk.
See this thread by patio11 for a good explanation as to why this isn't as dumb as it looks: https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/982208307057246209
> Here's a true statement: People who will in 2018 give birth to a child named Abigail are at least 5X more likely to give birth to a child in 2019 than people chosen at random.
> "Naming your child Abigail can't make you more likely to get pregnant."
> Again, failure to do the math.
> (You get a 2X there, for free, from the observation "If you had a child named Abigail this year you are biologically capable of having children; this is not true of no less than half of humanity. Now apply same insight to childbearing age and you're already at 5X+.)
This is terrible math. Nursing a child severely inhibits getting pregnant; without use of formula (or a substitute like goat's milk or what have you), it is extremely rare for children to be spaced only one year apart. It's rare enough that there's a special term for such children -- "Irish twins".
If you want to swagger your conditional probability, you should know that you've got to account for that in the probability of giving birth one year given that you gave birth the year before. You can't just account for the positive adjustments, ignore the negative ones, and then say "the odds are at least as good as they would be if the existing anticorrelations didn't exist".
> What's a SWAG for how often a purchase immediately goes wrong? Not right color? Fridge DOA? Shoot I mismeasured my kitchen? Wife just hates it? Call that 2%. If I fix it within a week, then 2% / 7 = 2.9e-3 probability of purchasing a new fridge.
> That's a 10X relative risk.
But of those listed options for "immediately goes wrong", zero of them would result in re-buying the same fridge. Wrong color, I mismeasured my kitchen, and wife hates it would cause you to buy a different fridge. Fridge DOA would cause you to refund the fridge and get a replacement.
How many people, faced with the expense of a fridge that hasn't worked out, figure the best course is to just write it off and buy a second copy, hoping that it will work out better?
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#23All that machine learning and they still send me reviews for products I haven’t received.
All that machine learning and they still think I would like to re-buy every product I've ever purchased.
All that machine learning and they still haven't cracked down on counterfeit goods on their platform?
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has the same problem. I was searching for information about Apache Chainsaw the other day, and at one point forgot to put the word "apache" in as a search term. Ended up with adverts for actual chainsaws for like a week.
I've always been frustrated about this as well, but I realized that it's often not Google's intention to care about this error. We're the product, willing or not, and the metric some chainsaw companies care about is simply 'searched "chainsaw"'. Google is happy to sell our eyes based on that, whether or not it converts into actual sales. In fact, for Google to deduce further and use ML to say "this user actually isn'…
Except you don’t pay Google for views, you pay for clicks. So it is in their interest to show things that convert.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#25I loved AMZN's cloud certifications. Not a Data Scientist / ML Developer, nor am I trying to be, but I love sitting for these exams as I believe the amount of study gives you enough credibility to have thoughtful conversations with specialists. Looking forward to reading sentiment to see if the curriculum is industry relevant and worthwhile!
We can agree to disagree on that. The certs are useful if your business requires them for whatever reason but my standard take is any cert that doesn’t require hands on learning, such as RHCSA/RHCE/CKA/CCIE, tend to be a pointless exercise in reading comprehension. I say this as someone with several AWS certs.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
All that machine learning and they still think I would like to re-buy every product I've ever purchased.
Google has the same problem. I was searching for information about Apache Chainsaw the other day, and at one point forgot to put the word "apache" in as a search term. Ended up with adverts for actual chainsaws for like a week.
Just be glad they didn't pair them with advertisements for face masks, and blood remover.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#27I loved AMZN's cloud certifications. Not a Data Scientist / ML Developer, nor am I trying to be, but I love sitting for these exams as I believe the amount of study gives you enough credibility to have thoughtful conversations with specialists. Looking forward to reading sentiment to see if the curriculum is industry relevant and worthwhile!
We can agree to disagree on that. The certs are useful if your business requires them for whatever reason but my standard take is any cert that doesn’t require hands on learning, such as RHCSA/RHCE/CKA/CCIE, tend to be a pointless exercise in reading comprehension. I say this as someone with several AWS certs.
Agreed certs are for talking the talk, experience is for walking the walk. Consulting companies are root of majority of cert takers from my experience.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#28I haven't had a lot of time to look at the offering, but can anybody tell me if these courses have any theory, or are they just for promoting specific AWS ML services without going into the underlying complexity?
I haven't looked in detail but the description strongly suggests an applied ML focus (which would be very typical of IT certifications in general). In AI/ML, there's some overlap between applied AI and research AI--e.g. you're going to want to know something about statistics in any case--but I'm not sure the distinction is always appreciated.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#29All that machine learning and they still send me reviews for products I haven’t received.
All that machine learning and they still think I would like to re-buy every product I've ever purchased.
It's worth pointing out that this recommendation behavior is only unintelligent if it has a downside, i.e. reduces Amazon's profits. Companies (and their AIs) only care about your business transactions, not whether you're annoyed.
I'm sure Amazon engineering is well aware of the jokes about their recommendation engines. But their recommendation engines are not calibrated to reduce jokes, they are calibrated to increase sales.
If you only know ONE thing about a person, pinging them about that one thing might still be better than ignoring them, or offering completely random recommendations. A memorably annoying ad can work better than a boring and inoffensive one, sometimes.
Re: Amazon’s own ‘Machine Learning University’ now available to all developers
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
All that machine learning and they still think I would like to re-buy every product I've ever purchased.
It's worth pointing out that this recommendation behavior is only unintelligent if it has a downside, i.e. reduces Amazon's profits. Companies (and their AIs) only care about your business transactions, not whether you're annoyed. I'm sure Amazon engineering is well aware of the jokes about their recommendation engines. But their recommendation engines are not calibrated to reduce jokes, they are calibrated to increa…
That's not true, putting a product I've already ordered on my recommended list instead of something i actually want to buy is costing them money in lost sales.