It depends on what you want out of it! If you're looking for immediately practical skills, of course you're better off taking 6.036 (machine learning). That's n

It depends on what you want out of it! If you're looking for immediately practical skills, of course you're better off taking 6.036 (machine learning). That's not the point of 6.034, which is something more vague that emphasizes intuition over rigor. Personally I think that offering both - a skills-oriented class and an idea-oriented class - is super cool and unique and I wish that pattern was more common.