4 ms·

Textbooks? Really? How about start with a great lecturer like - Nando de Freitas - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0z_jCi0XWqI8awUuQRFnyw https://www.youtu

by orasis 12y ago

Textbooks? Really? How about start with a great lecturer like - Nando de Freitas - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0z_jCi0XWqI8awUuQRFnyw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0z_jCi0XWqI8awUuQRFnyw David Mackay -http://videolectures.net/course_information_theory_pattern_recognition/ http://videolectures.net/course_information_theory_pattern_r... or the (sometimes too dense) Andrew Ng - https://www.coursera.org/course/ml https://www.coursera.org/course/ml

incision 12y ago
>'Textbooks?' The article addresses this almost immediately. It's fine to disagree, but crapping a 'Really?' plus some contextless links onto someone who put forth general reasoning for the nature of the recommendations and spent 1300+ words describing expectations, key takeaways and projects for those recommendations is just lame.
- orasis 12y ago
  On a given topic, I believe the best textbook is an inferior medium to the best lecture. Rather than blathering for 1300 words, I provided links to some excellent machine learning lectures.
  - beejiu 12y ago
    You sound like you've had some bad experiences with books. If you learn better with lectures, great. However, it's not for everybody -- I personally think spending time away from the computer (until I'm programming something), with a book, paper and a pen is very good time spent.
    - Chronic29 12y ago
      But time spent with a computer is time efficiently spent. You can't say that about books.
    - Houshalter 12y ago
      I read textbooks on my computer actually. Not by choice though, textbooks are difficult to find and too expensive. I used to hate lectures when I was in school but now I sort of prefer them. It's easier for some reason. It's more passive; you just sit there and listen rather than actively read. It doesn't seem to be slower like others complain, and may even be faster. I read difficult texts very slowly and methodically, and often have to reread stuff.
burkaman 12y ago
Not sure how you saw the books and missed the explanation, but "But why textbooks? Because they're one of the few learning mediums where you'll really own the knowledge. You can take a course, a MOOC, join a reading group, whatever you want. But with textbooks, it's an intimate bond. You'll spill brain-juice on every page; you'll inadvertently memorize the chapter titles, the examples, and the exercises; you'll scribble in the margins and dog-ear commonly referenced areas and look for applications of the topics you learn -- the textbook itself becomes a part of your knowledge (the above image shows my nearest textbook). Successful learners don't just read textbooks. Learn to use textbooks in this way, and you can master many subjects -- certainly machine learning."
- orasis 12y ago
  I saw the explanation and I don't buy it. In pretty much every occasion that I've found a textbook valuable, I've found lectures by the authors far more valuable. David Mackay's lectures are incredible and go much further in explaining the material in an understandable fashion than his excellent book "Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms".
HamSession 12y ago
Its because textbooks are usually more in depth than lectures can go due to time considerations, this is why any graduate program is 90% papers and textbooks. A great example of this is Andrew Ng's course, even though he is the co-inventor of LDA (complicated Bayes network) he does not explain Bayesian analysis in his course.

by orasis 12y ago

incision 12y ago

>'Textbooks?' The article addresses this almost immediately. It's fine to disagree, but crapping a 'Really?' plus some contextless links onto someone who put forth general reasoning for the nature of the recommendations and spent 1300+ words describing expectations, key takeaways and projects for those recommendations is just lame.

orasis 12y ago
On a given topic, I believe the best textbook is an inferior medium to the best lecture. Rather than blathering for 1300 words, I provided links to some excellent machine learning lectures.
- beejiu 12y ago
  You sound like you've had some bad experiences with books. If you learn better with lectures, great. However, it's not for everybody -- I personally think spending time away from the computer (until I'm programming something), with a book, paper and a pen is very good time spent.
  - Chronic29 12y ago
    But time spent with a computer is time efficiently spent. You can't say that about books.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    I read textbooks on my computer actually. Not by choice though, textbooks are difficult to find and too expensive. I used to hate lectures when I was in school but now I sort of prefer them. It's easier for some reason. It's more passive; you just sit there and listen rather than actively read. It doesn't seem to be slower like others complain, and may even be faster. I read difficult texts very slowly and methodically, and often have to reread stuff.

burkaman 12y ago

Not sure how you saw the books and missed the explanation, but "But why textbooks? Because they're one of the few learning mediums where you'll really own the knowledge. You can take a course, a MOOC, join a reading group, whatever you want. But with textbooks, it's an intimate bond. You'll spill brain-juice on every page; you'll inadvertently memorize the chapter titles, the examples, and the exercises; you'll scribble in the margins and dog-ear commonly referenced areas and look for applications of the topics you learn -- the textbook itself becomes a part of your knowledge (the above image shows my nearest textbook). Successful learners don't just read textbooks. Learn to use textbooks in this way, and you can master many subjects -- certainly machine learning."

orasis 12y ago
I saw the explanation and I don't buy it. In pretty much every occasion that I've found a textbook valuable, I've found lectures by the authors far more valuable. David Mackay's lectures are incredible and go much further in explaining the material in an understandable fashion than his excellent book "Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms".

HamSession 12y ago

Its because textbooks are usually more in depth than lectures can go due to time considerations, this is why any graduate program is 90% papers and textbooks. A great example of this is Andrew Ng's course, even though he is the co-inventor of LDA (complicated Bayes network) he does not explain Bayesian analysis in his course.