While that approach might help you understand how to code a technique, it doesn't do much to teach you to evaluate when and why to use a technique. You can read

While that approach might help you understand how to code a technique, it doesn't do much to teach you to evaluate when and why to use a technique. You can read a bunch of tips on when to use something, but simply remembering these "facts" rather than being able to relate them from first principles is not efficient. Granted after you understand the math, you no longer need an equation, but simply a mental picture of what is going on (for example, I remember linear regression with projection of data onto a line or plane). After you have a good foundation, I found often-times you can then ignore the details of equations and see the relevant parts (different forms of Bayes rule, projections, chain-rule, etc) and arrive at the general idea of a technique. The interesting and hard part is understanding the technique, and I think that is probably the most bang for your bucks, as I assume you are proficient in programming already.