Udacity is kinda ridiculous, making us answer some stupid questions every 5 minutes. I'm not in school anymore (by the way: no one ever learns anything in school).
Google's Free Deep Learning Course
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#32How accessible is a course like this with no prior knowledge of linear algebra? I know it's listed in the pre-reqs, but with a good head for math and lots of calc, is it something that could be picked up along the way? I'm normally pretty bold about stuff like that, but I know it's a core part of deep learning / ML. If it's really necessary, if anyone has any resources for linear algebra run-throughs it would be grea…
Haven taken this course (though I will), but check out Andrew Ng's Coursera's ML course. He gives a crash course in linear algebra. It helped me a lot in my endeavours in ML & neural nets. I also like to learn as I go along, and this intro was just about enough to get started.
I did not find the crash course in Linear Algebra to be useful. I had to complete Strang's course (ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video-lectures/) before doing Andrew Ng's course , after which most of the course seemed easy.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sort of makes you wonder if we're looking at a future where something like 5 teams composed of 1000 of the top researchers each are going to build the premier ML systems, and those teams can then solve most generalized ML tasks. Most other programmers wouldn't be able to contribute much value in a world that worked like this. This perhaps mirrors how the chip market works, which similarly involves a limited number…
But there may be a larger market to hire people who know how to use the tools they design.
The caveat is that in the long term, ML systems are generalized systems that function independently and won't necessarily always remain in the form of an "API tool" that traditional programmers will interface with.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#34Would it be beneficial for me as a developer to take these machine learning courses? I took a course in the uni a while back and know the general techniques, but I'm not sure how it would help me in my career unless I'm doing some cutting edge work in the field or focusing on a machine learning career, in which case wouldn't I need to be pursuing a postdoc or something in it?
Machine learning only going to be more and more relevant in the tech industry. Eventually you're going to have to deal with some sort of data analysis, just because there is little to no barrier from data collection to data analysis.
I'm not sure that a deep learning course would be a good first course. But an intro course on linear regression and basic probability/statistics would be worth looking into.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#35Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#36Would it be beneficial for me as a developer to take these machine learning courses? I took a course in the uni a while back and know the general techniques, but I'm not sure how it would help me in my career unless I'm doing some cutting edge work in the field or focusing on a machine learning career, in which case wouldn't I need to be pursuing a postdoc or something in it?
If you can make the time than learning new things and taking courses is always a good idea. You never know where you're going to end up as a developer. Who knows you may end up changing the course of your career. Also machine learning and AI are all becoming big fields.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#37I'm going through the course right now, and the instructor is saying some strange things, clearly (to me) ignoring that what he's saying is only true in very specific contexts.
For example, in the video I just watched he said "the natural way to compute the distance between two vectors is using cross entropy." And then he goes on to describe some unnatural features of cross entropy. The truly "natural" way to compute distances between vectors is the Euclidean distance, or at least any measure that has the properties of a metric.
I can understand this is a crash course and there isn't time to cover nuances, but I'd much rather the instructor say things like "one common/popular way to do X is..." rather than making blanket and misleading statements. Or else how can I trust his claims about deep learning?
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#38I fucking love Google, it's the greatest company there is. Thank you for this free course, incredibly high quality and very enjoyable to watch.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#39How accessible is a course like this with no prior knowledge of linear algebra? I know it's listed in the pre-reqs, but with a good head for math and lots of calc, is it something that could be picked up along the way? I'm normally pretty bold about stuff like that, but I know it's a core part of deep learning / ML. If it's really necessary, if anyone has any resources for linear algebra run-throughs it would be grea…
Simple explanation of the basics:
http://www.intmath.com/matrices-determinants/matrix-determin... - matrices
http://www.intmath.com/vectors/vectors-intro.php - vectors
Linear Algebra using Python:
https://www.coursera.org/course/matrix - Coursera: Coding the Matrix
http://codingthematrix.com/ - Website: Coding the Matrix
The simplest software for linear algebra would be GeoGebra, http://www.geogebra.org/. For instance, to enter a matrix just have the spreadsheet view open, enter the numbers, highlight the cells, then choose the option "Create Matrix". To enter a vector start writing "vec" in the input bar at the bottom and intellisense gives you the option to choose "Vector[, ]". Choose this. Fill it in, for example, "Vector[(-3, 4), (1, 2)]" (Hint: Use Tab to move between options in the input formula, here to move between "" and "]".) Voila the vector is drawn! You can even draw a vector with just two clicks in Graphics view, if you first select the "Vectors" tab at the top (the symbol is a line with an arrowhead). The GeoGebra software is really incredible for learning/doing Linear Algebra, Calculus and Statistics. A real godsend.
Re: Google's Free Deep Learning Course
#40Would it be beneficial for me as a developer to take these machine learning courses? I took a course in the uni a while back and know the general techniques, but I'm not sure how it would help me in my career unless I'm doing some cutting edge work in the field or focusing on a machine learning career, in which case wouldn't I need to be pursuing a postdoc or something in it?
I'd recommend really mastering basic statistics if you aren't going to go all the way with learning data analysis. It's surprisingly subtle and more widely applicable to a broad range of careers.