

Ask HN: Getting Started With Machine Learning/AI - gsmaverick

I'm a first year university student and I want to learn about AI and machine learning specifically.  Where should I start?  What sorts of resources should I use?
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nzmsv
I know this is obvious, but... Find out which of your professors work in this
area. Then go talk to them, and ask them about their work. Get involved with a
research project.

Learning things from books is great (and you'll still have to do a lot of
that), but there is no substitute for networking. Approaching professors can
be intimidating, but you'll have to do it if you want to go to grad school.
Might as well start now.

In my experience, the profs who are really good at what they do don't act
arrogant and aren't dismissive of students. If anything, they get really
excited talking about their research, and you'll have a hard time leaving
their office :) If you do encounter someone who is arrogant, that tells you
something about them (you don't want to be their grad student). However, don't
mistake a busy prof for an arrogant one. Sometimes you just have to be
persistent.

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physcab
A good indespensible textbook for me had been chris bishops book Pattern
Recognition and Machine Learning. However it might be suited best for the grad
student.

Honestly the best thing you can do is start working on machine learning
problems. Try and build a classifier or predictor. Brush up on probability
theory.

If you have no idea where to begin, check out Collective Intelligence. It's a
great intro read that gives a good background into the types of problems ML
and AI are trying to solve.

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apurva
The good news is you are at the right place :) You should probably pick up
courses on machine learning as will I.
<http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2009/cs7641_spring/> kind of tells you the
topics you may want to look at. <http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/> is
mentioned in the previous threads which has some neat tutorials too

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tiffani
I just started watching some Machine Learning lectures on iTunes U. from
Stanford. Great stuff so far.

[http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.s...](http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.stanford.edu.1615003397.01615003400)

<http://cs229.stanford.edu>

