

Ask HN: How can an individual get into machine learning? - namanyayg

HN, I&#x27;m a web developer who&#x27;s good at front-end programming and okayish at back-end programming.<p>Reading articles on large companies making breakthroughs in machine learning and neural networking makes a part of me quite excited.<p>So I wanted to ask if it&#x27;s useful for an individual to get into this sort of stuff? Is this a viable career path right now? What beginner books or sites can you recommend?
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jacquesm
This probably could almost be a FAQ.

Have a look here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7783550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7783550)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2645671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2645671)

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namanyayg
Thank you for the links, sorry for posting an oft-repeated question.

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jacquesm
Np. Way to avoid this is to do this:

google site:news.ycombinator.com subject of your question

More often than not a bunch of links will pop up.

good luck with studying!

j

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avinassh
Do this Coursera course, targeted towards beginners and its taught by Andrew
Ng (Co-founder of Coursera) -
[https://www.coursera.org/course/ml](https://www.coursera.org/course/ml)

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brudgers
The videos are available here:
[https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture](https://class.coursera.org/ml-005/lecture)

I think it is worth mentioning that "beginners" should be understood as
beginners in machine learning and not beginners in computer science. Ng's
course more or less assumes students have the equivalent of an upper division
undergraduate or graduate background in computer science.

While it may be a valuable learning experience for a person who isn't
comfortable knocking out algorithms, academic success will be rather difficult
to achieve.

