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Is there anything an "early" programmer like myself can do to play around with this stuff without a background in the related math? I'm dying for this stuff to

Is there anything an "early" programmer like myself can do to play around with this stuff without a background in the related math? I'm dying for this stuff to be dumbed down enough where Joe WebUser can feed in arbitrary data in a csv or point an app at a data source and get some sort of meaningful results. It truly seems like an area where once the barrier to entry is greatly reduced, the creativity of laymen will lead to some truly amazing executions.

codyguy 11y ago
Hi shostack, You can try out ThatNeedle API. http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-api.html http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-api.html . While it is only catering to retail for now. The underlying capability is broader and generic. If you have specific needs, let's get in touch and discuss. You should at least take a look at the gif demo on the site.
- shostack 11y ago
  That's pretty cool, I'll play around with it. Thanks for sharing!
  - codyguy 11y ago
    You are welcome!
chm 11y ago
I'm dying for this stuff to be dumbed down enough[...] It kind of already is. Have you read the docs/examples? I don't think your mentality is fruitful. Having argued with people who shared your point of view, it seems there will always be something too difficult that prevents them from being good at X. There's no substitute for sweat. Have fun with the code they gave you and see where you end up!
- shostack 11y ago
  I think we have different definitions of what "dumbed down" means. I never said I could/would never put in the work to learn it. I'm saying that the place it is in right now is still too advanced for someone with my background to pick up and play around with without sitting down to seriously study the underlying concepts that are objectively fairly dense subject matter that can require advanced math and CS backgrounds. To be clear, I'm not advocating that everything should be dumbed down for the sake of it. My point was largely that when the barrier to creation gets low enough, more creative types that don't have the heavy technical backgrounds can pick it up and create things that more technical users may never have imagined. Not everything is best served as remaining elusively complex for the layman. Also, for the record, I will probably read up on some of this stuff because I find it interesting and enjoy learning. I just wish it was a step more accessible than it is today, even with this development.
  - codyguy 11y ago
    I agree with Shostack. He is talking about removing friction, easing out the learning curve. The command line make command on GNU/Linux is an example of something that "dumbs down"/makes easy a quick start , as opposed to editing and configuring the Makefile yourself. Similarly, yum/apt-get take this "dumb down" one step further. Nothing wrong with removing friction. Infact this is an idea for a startup right here, remove friction from machine learning/NLP/API. That is why I responded to shostack in the first place. The response was specific to his question and I got plenty of downvotes on my karma. No worries there :)
  - chm 11y ago
    Hi Shostack, I wasn't trying to bring you down. Maybe what you're looking for is a visual programming environment, where you can drag and drop functions, data, etc?
    - shostack 11y ago
      Not sure I even need a visual programming environment as I'm comfortable using a command line and hacking stuff together in Sublime. However I am highly visual and visualizing the impact on the results would be really helpful. I deal with a lot of analytics and data as part of my day-to-day managing digital media. I often find that I can easily spot trends just by glancing at data visualizations, and infer insights from them. Further, being able to visualize the nature of the functions/data/etc. would also be very helpful. I tend to need to visualize something to fully grok it. If you have any suggestions for a more visual take on machine learning that is beginner friendly, I'd love a link.
nl 11y ago
You can get away without Math now, but it's now it still a pretty steep learning curve. I'd suggest http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/ http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/ is a good place to start. The other option is using nVidia Digits toolkit.
cafebeen 11y ago
It's probably best to understand what you're doing if you use something like this. I'd recommend at least going through an intro ML book/course to learn the basics first.
- shammo 11y ago
  any suggestions on good intro ML books?
  - cafebeen 11y ago
    These are both good options: http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Information-Statistics/dp/0387310738 http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informati... http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Statistical-Learning-Prediction/dp/0387848576/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Statistical-Learning-Pred...
scoot 11y ago
I recently asked the same question [1], and got several helpful replies. I found this [2] very approachable, and you can find the material [3] and code [4] from the talks on github. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457439 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bRUvvlaBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bRUvvlaBw [3] https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy2013_talks https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy2013_talks [4] https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_scipy2013 https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_scipy2013
T-A 11y ago
Maybe try some of cloud-based machine learning offerings like https://studio.azureml.net/ https://studio.azureml.net/ http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/services-catalog.html http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl... https://cloud.google.com/prediction/docs https://cloud.google.com/prediction/docs

codyguy 11y ago

Hi shostack, You can try out ThatNeedle API. http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-api.html http://www.thatneedle.com/nlp-api.html . While it is only catering to retail for now. The underlying capability is broader and generic. If you have specific needs, let's get in touch and discuss. You should at least take a look at the gif demo on the site.

shostack 11y ago
That's pretty cool, I'll play around with it. Thanks for sharing!
- codyguy 11y ago
  You are welcome!

chm 11y ago

I'm dying for this stuff to be dumbed down enough[...] It kind of already is. Have you read the docs/examples? I don't think your mentality is fruitful. Having argued with people who shared your point of view, it seems there will always be something too difficult that prevents them from being good at X. There's no substitute for sweat. Have fun with the code they gave you and see where you end up!

shostack 11y ago
I think we have different definitions of what "dumbed down" means. I never said I could/would never put in the work to learn it. I'm saying that the place it is in right now is still too advanced for someone with my background to pick up and play around with without sitting down to seriously study the underlying concepts that are objectively fairly dense subject matter that can require advanced math and CS backgrounds. To be clear, I'm not advocating that everything should be dumbed down for the sake of it. My point was largely that when the barrier to creation gets low enough, more creative types that don't have the heavy technical backgrounds can pick it up and create things that more technical users may never have imagined. Not everything is best served as remaining elusively complex for the layman. Also, for the record, I will probably read up on some of this stuff because I find it interesting and enjoy learning. I just wish it was a step more accessible than it is today, even with this development.
- codyguy 11y ago
  I agree with Shostack. He is talking about removing friction, easing out the learning curve. The command line make command on GNU/Linux is an example of something that "dumbs down"/makes easy a quick start , as opposed to editing and configuring the Makefile yourself. Similarly, yum/apt-get take this "dumb down" one step further. Nothing wrong with removing friction. Infact this is an idea for a startup right here, remove friction from machine learning/NLP/API. That is why I responded to shostack in the first place. The response was specific to his question and I got plenty of downvotes on my karma. No worries there :)
- chm 11y ago
  Hi Shostack, I wasn't trying to bring you down. Maybe what you're looking for is a visual programming environment, where you can drag and drop functions, data, etc?
  - shostack 11y ago
    Not sure I even need a visual programming environment as I'm comfortable using a command line and hacking stuff together in Sublime. However I am highly visual and visualizing the impact on the results would be really helpful. I deal with a lot of analytics and data as part of my day-to-day managing digital media. I often find that I can easily spot trends just by glancing at data visualizations, and infer insights from them. Further, being able to visualize the nature of the functions/data/etc. would also be very helpful. I tend to need to visualize something to fully grok it. If you have any suggestions for a more visual take on machine learning that is beginner friendly, I'd love a link.

nl 11y ago

You can get away without Math now, but it's now it still a pretty steep learning curve. I'd suggest http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/ http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/ is a good place to start. The other option is using nVidia Digits toolkit.

cafebeen 11y ago

It's probably best to understand what you're doing if you use something like this. I'd recommend at least going through an intro ML book/course to learn the basics first.

shammo 11y ago
any suggestions on good intro ML books?
- cafebeen 11y ago
  These are both good options: http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Information-Statistics/dp/0387310738 http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informati... http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Statistical-Learning-Prediction/dp/0387848576/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Statistical-Learning-Pred...

scoot 11y ago

I recently asked the same question [1], and got several helpful replies. I found this [2] very approachable, and you can find the material [3] and code [4] from the talks on github. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457439 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bRUvvlaBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bRUvvlaBw [3] https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy2013_talks https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy2013_talks [4] https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_scipy2013 https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_scipy2013

T-A 11y ago

Maybe try some of cloud-based machine learning offerings like https://studio.azureml.net/ https://studio.azureml.net/ http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/services-catalog.html http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl... https://cloud.google.com/prediction/docs https://cloud.google.com/prediction/docs