Programmers learn by implementing techniques from scratch. It is a type of learning that is perhaps slower than other types of learning, but fuller in that all of the micro decisions involved become intimate. The implementation is owned from head to tail. In this post we take a close look at Joel Grus popular book […]
Where does theory fit into a top-down approach to studying machine learning? In the traditional approach to teaching machine learning, theory comes first requiring an extensive background in mathematics to be able to understand it. In my approach to teaching machine learning, I start with teaching you how to work problems end-to-end and deliver results. […]
How Do I Get Started In Machine Learning? I’m a developer. I have read a book or some posts on machine learning. I have watched some of the Coursera machine learning course. I still don’t know how to get started… Does this sound familiar? The most common question I’m asked by developers on my newsletter is: How do […]
You do not need to learn linear algebra before you get started in machine learning, but at some time you may wish to dive deeper. In fact, if there was one area of mathematics I would suggest improving before the others, it would be linear algebra. It will give you the tools to help you […]
What does it take to do well in competitive machine learning? To really dig into this question, you need to dig into the people that do well. In 2010 I participated in a Kaggle competition to predict the outcome of chess games in the future. It was a fascinating problem because it required you to […]
Identify and Tackle Your Self-Limiting Beliefs and Finally Make Progress I get a lot of email from developers and students looking to get started in machine learning. The first question I ask them is what is stopping them from getting started? I try to get to the heart of what they are struggling with, and almost […]
In this post I lay out a concrete self-study roadmap for applied machine learning that you can use to orient yourself and figure out your next step. I think a lot about frameworks and systematic approaches (as evidenced on my blog). I would consider this post a vast expansion of my previous thoughts on a self-study […]
Need Help Getting Started with Applied Machine Learning? These are the Step-by-Step Guides that You’ve Been Looking For! What do you want help with? The most common question I’m asked is: “how do I get started?” My best advice for getting started in machine learning is broken down into a 5-step process: Step 1: Adjust Mindset. […]
In this post I want to show you that programmers can get into machine learning. I will show you that learning machine learning can be just like learning any other piece of high technology. We’ll compare learning machine learning to learning to program in the first place, which may have been an even larger challenge. […]
This was a really hard post to write because I want it to be really valuable. I sat down with a blank page and asked the really hard question of what are the very best libraries, courses, papers and books I would recommend to an absolute beginner in the field of Machine Learning. I really […]
