
Ask HN: Machine learning, AI – struggling learners - samblr
First time I tried learning machine learning was in Andrew Ng&#x27;s mooc back in 2011. I gave up as I had other commitments at the time and since then  following ML only in tech news. As many experts advise that Machine learning, Deep learning and AI is a necessary skill going ahead (5-10 years) for a programmer - I have tried to pick it up again.<p>But whilst understanding math concepts I feel lost at 2-3 levels down of any link&#x2F;training&#x2F;forum&#x2F;paper. Then I spend time brushing concepts of the same. I feel my progress  is in slow-mo.<p>Any advise from people who have jumped to ML-AI wagon feeling the way I do ? Any people in learning-struggling wagon and how are you coping ?
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vaibkv
You need to pick up problems and do them. Pick up a problem and learn the math
for it, then code it, and then if you like, publish it or blog about it. You
only learn a subject by doing problems. So, you need to think about the list
of problems you're going to solve. Here's a starter list - make a
recommendation engine for books to read for a user, make a sentiment analysis
prediction algorithm for hospitals based on patient feedback (textual), make a
spam detection engine for sms'es you get on your phone, make a multi document
summarizer, make a prediction model for predicting whether a certain flight
would be on time or not, make a bot application for your phone such that for
everything you want to do on your phone you just go to that bot application
and type in and tell it what to do, advance your bot by taking voice
instructions, make a AI game to play tic-tac-toe - make your friends play with
it and let it learn / grow it's training data and then it should improve in
beating other people. If you only do these, it'll take you a few months. But
like they say - "when you want to learn something, assume you have all the
time in the world". Best of luck!

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boniface316
I am going to follow this advice!

Here is a sample that I am following.

[http://minimaxir.com/portfolio/](http://minimaxir.com/portfolio/)

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selectron
There is no way machine learning will be a necessary skill for software
engineering, if that is your motivation I would not spend time learning it.
However, if you still want to learn it you should first study statistics, for
instance [http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/](http://www-
bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/).

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boniface316
I have started reading this book. So far so good.

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boniface316
Hey man, I am in the same level as you. I am really pushing myself to learn ML
and AI. If you would like, you and I can motivate each other in achieving
this. I always love to meet people who wants to do great things in life. Let
me know if you are interested in connecting with me to move forward.

