The Best Way To Learn AI/ML As A Beginner! #30

Without feeling overwhelmed with the theory...

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the 30th edition of my newsletter ML & AI Cupcakes!

The agenda of today’s newsletter is to discuss what is the best approach to start your AI/ML journey.

Let’s begin!

If you are new to the domain of AI/ML, diving straight into theory may not be a good idea. Especially, if you are transitioning from a different domain and learning on your own.

Many times, it is suggested that we should learn the fundamentals first and then start building projects.

This approach may work for academic settings where you are doing a course and there are no tight deadlines. But may not work well in industry settings where you need to learn, adapt and apply the things at a faster pace.

So, what to do?

The answer is, use the top-down approach of learning. This is more suitable and practical to thrive in industry environments.

In case you don’t know what is a top-down approach, check out the link below. It describes the two most widely used learning methods called bottom-up and town-down along with their advantages and limitations.

https://kavitagupta.substack.com/p/how-to-learn-ml-3

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In the top-down approach, you start by building projects and refine your understanding of the subject along the way.

Initially, it’s is better to choose small projects to gain clarity and understanding of important concepts.

How to begin?

• Get a clean dataset (Kaggle is a good source)

• Learn the basic use of AI/ML libraries in Python

• Do some basic Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

• Apply a simple AI/ML algorithm and get the results

What to avoid initially?

• Diving deeper into mathematical details

• Trying to understand every algorithm

• Choosing long and complicated projects

So, the ideas is,

• Start simple

• Build confidence

• Then go deeper

The key is to learn by doing.

If you are consistent, these small steps can lead to significant progress over the period of time.

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What is your first project as a beginner in AI/ML?

Let me know in comments if you need beginner-friendly project recommendations.

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Writing each newsletter takes a lot of research, time and effort. Just want to make sure it reaches maximum people to help them grow in their AI/ML journey.

It would be great if you could share this newsletter with your network.

Also, please let me know your feedbacks and suggestions in the comments section. That will help me keep going. Even a “like” on my posts will tell me that my posts are helpful to you.

See you soon!

-Kavita