Series Introduction

Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:29 pm

Welcome to My "Learn From Scratch" Series!

So, here's the thing: I don't actually know what the hell I'm doing, and if you're reading this then chances are you don't either. In fact, for the first long-while there likely won't even be a you, it'll just be me talking to myself!

And that's all good!

My ambition is to cobble together the most passionate community of Machine Learners (sic?). Not like, in the US. Or even in English. Those are small fry ambitions. I want to forge with you the biggest Machine Learning community on the planet, period. I believe that if we can do that, then we will accelerate the rate of advancement in Machine Learning by several factors.

To do that, I need to figure out a way to make the topic as accessible as possible. And to do that, I need to actually learn Machine Learning myself. From scratch.

What does "From Scratch" mean?

My highest completed math course was Trigonometry, in 2011
I don't have a formal education outside of your standard first year/100-level college courses (of which I hold a sub 2.0 GPA)
I'm a web developer by trade, but I couldn't tell you how to sort an array or perform optimizations of any kind

I don't actually even know if I have the required prerequisites to start learning this.

The Format

Because my goal is to hype as many people as possible (rather than to learn as fast as possible) my personal progress will be rather slow. Each day, I'll create one post distilling everything I learned, including:

Summaries of things I've watched and read
My own code examples and challenges to help push you further
Polls and other interactive things to help spark discussion

Thanks! I'm not very good at ending long walls of text, so I'll just awkwardly end it here. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @HeyCarlosRamos