Santiago Profile picture
24 Nov, 11 tweets, 2 min read
Machine Learning doesn't need to be overwhelming.

Here is a strategy that you can use to get started without too many distractions.

πŸ§΅πŸ‘‡
If you start today, you'll probably feel overwhelmed by how much β€”apparentlyβ€” you need to understand.

But it doesn't need to be like that.

You can take a much more practical approach to learn what you need and start providing value right away.

πŸ‘‡
Instead of starting "from the beginning," you can hack your way "from within."

The idea is simple:

1. Pick a simple problem β€”or an areaβ€” that's interesting to you.

2. Take the necessary steps to learn how to solve that problem.

3. Keep adding complexity as you see fit.

πŸ‘‡
A "simple problem" always starts with some data.

Look around your organization, and they are likely collecting some data already.

(Even accessing Google Analytics data is a great start!)

πŸ‘‡
Once you get the data, you want to start asking questions about it.

I got started with the check data of customers of a restaurant.

I decided to answer questions like this: "What did those who bought a beer have for dinner?"

πŸ‘‡
Answering that question led to even more interesting questions.

It also put me on a path to start learning and proving value since the very first day!

πŸ‘‡
Here are some other interesting questions I worked on:

▫️ What's the preferred beer for those who bought burgers?

▫️ Who spends more? Those who buy appetizers or those who don't?

▫️ What's the single appetizer that leads to a larger spend?

πŸ‘‡
Unless you have access to some data already, starting with a valuable problem will be a little bit hard.

You can always tackle a toy exercise, but finding the right one is not always easy.

If you are stuck, consider focusing on a specific area instead.

πŸ‘‡
Here are a few areas that you can choose to get started:

▫️ Defecting defects using pictures
▫️ Answering questions automatically
▫️ Detecting specific objects in a picture
▫️ Forecasting your financial position
▫️ Recommending products based on purchases

πŸ‘‡
Narrowing your focus to a specific area will help direct your attention to what's really important.

Remember:

You want to add knowledge in a very intentional manner. One step at a time, as it's needed to move forward.

πŸ‘‡
And, of course, there's nothing wrong with the traditional top-down approach.

Or with any other way you decide to follow.

The only important thing is that you stay consistent and keep providing value!

β€’ β€’ β€’

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More from @svpino

25 Nov
Working on problems is the best way to learn Machine Learning.

Here are 10 projects to start your journey.

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I picked all 10 projects from Kaggle.

When you are getting started, having a community ready to help is very important.

Also, every one of these problems has been solved by many people, and you can find those answers if you get stuck!

πŸ‘‡
I sorted the problems in the way I'd recommend you to start.

They more or less increase in complexity as you move through the list.

Let's get started!

πŸ‘‡
Read 14 tweets
22 Nov
10 questions that spark conversations, make you think, and give you a solid foundation of practical Machine Learning.

πŸ§΅πŸ‘‡
(Some) interviews are broken.

They focus on trivia and expect candidates to recall concepts that aren't even relevant for the job.

This is garbage.

Instead, focus on problems that scientists and engineers face every day while doing their jobs: πŸ‘‡
Acme Inc. is building a model to classify images in several different categories.

Unfortunately, they don't have a lot of images for some of the classes.

How would you handle such an imbalanced dataset?

(1 of 10)
Read 13 tweets
21 Nov
A plan to get a job as a Machine Learning Engineer.

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Put in the work, level up, and get ready to demonstrate that you can deliver value.

You'll have to answer technical questions. Study up.

(If you aren't prepared, you won't pass the first round of interviews.)

(1 of 10)
Focus on showing, not telling.

What can you do today that will serve you as an asset when justifying your experience?

Creating a strong portfolio showing what you are capable of is the most important step you can take.

(2 of 10)
Read 12 tweets
19 Nov
Everything I know about great Software Developers.

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1. Great Software Developers are humble.

They never put themselves above anyone else. They are willing to leverage existing solutions and listen to others.

(1 of 15)
2. Great Software Developers are self-motivated to learn.

They never stop improving and never get complacent. They understand the importance of growing their skills.

(2 of 15)
Read 24 tweets
24 Oct
33 applications of Machine Learning, 3 different categories.

(And there are so many more it's not even funny!)

It doesn't matter what you enjoy in life. There's something here for you!

πŸ§΅πŸ‘‡
▫️ Natural Language Processing Applications

1. Speech recognition
2. Answering questions
3. Translation
4. Generating content
5. Summarizing documents
6. Sentiment analysis
7. Virtual assistants
8. Classifying text
9. Autocorrection
10. Urgency detection
11. Text extraction

πŸ‘‡
▫️ Computer Vision Applications

1. Face recognition
2. Image captioning
3. Image coloring
4. Object detection
5. Image classification
6. Pose estimation
7. Image transformation
8. Image analysis
9. Automatic drone inspections
10. Defect detection
11. Image restoration

πŸ‘‡
Read 4 tweets
22 Oct
A quick, non-technical explanation of Dropout.

(As easy as I could make it.)

πŸ§΅πŸ‘‡
Remember those two kids from school that sat together and copied from each other during exams?

They aced every test but were hardly brilliant, remember?

Eventually, the teacher had to set them apart. That was the only way to force them to learn.

πŸ‘‡
The same happens with neural networks.

Sometimes, a few hidden units create associations that, over time, provide most of the predictive power, forcing the network to ignore the rest.

This is called co-adaptation, and it prevents networks from generalizing appropriately.

πŸ‘‡
Read 7 tweets

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