Another one of these incredibly interesting online classes came to an end. Machine learning was one of the first two classes that started last fall. As I thought to make AI and ML in parallel would be too much, I decided for AI with the intention to make ML later. The second round of ML was announced for January, but actually started in April. Andrew Ng from Stanford, who some people call a rock star in ML, thought the class. The videos were longer than what I was used to, and I downloaded them to my Android to watch them in the train to work. The homework consisted of review questions and work assignments for octave. The last time I did something with MatLab was more than ten years ago, and I remembered nothing of it.
The class started with gradient descent and logistic regression. And almost everything that followed was compared against and related to them.
I had some prior experience in ML, but no formal training. At TCG I learned the basics from a co worker. Then I implemented a document classification engine using an SVM. I read many books on the topic. Later I develpoed a prediction system for good days and locations for paragliding, again using an SVM as well as an evolutionary optimization. Continue reading “machine learning class”