Starting Machine Learning

I was reading tech articles and I came across this article from Gizmodo. After reading the article, I found the paper here. This sparked an interest in this type of technology. As a pilot of unmanned aircraft, autonomous operations using a thinking computer, I was interested in how I can use this type of programming to improve areas of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

To begin this journey, I did some research to determine where I actually needed to start. The hardest part of this adventure was not the 10,000 steps before more, nor was it the sand in my shoe, it was finding directions to the staircase.

After some Googling, I found myself reading a few websites that had some advice on what was needed to get into Machine Learning. The first steps either said I needed to learn math or I needed to learn Python/R. I decided I would start with learning Python first. I have previously taken courses from Codeacademy.com and Teamtreehouse.com. I decided to head back to Team Treehouse and get a refresher before moving forward.

After taking the Python track on the team treehouse website, I moved to Youtube to try and find tutorials. I decided I would like to see what this actually looks like before I jump into the math. This would let me understand what I am looking for when I am learning math. The Youtube channel I started with is Techwithtim. I have started the tutorials and found myself typing along without fully understanding what I was writing. I decided to print out the code and take my time looking over the functions so that I would understand what was actually happening on this. This process worked well for me and allowed me to take a step back from the tutorials to focus on learning what was happening.

From here, I am multiple books coming in from thriftbooks.com that cover Python, Algebra, Calculus, and Statistics. While doing Machine Learning research I was guided to Andrew Ngs course on Coursera. I signed up for this course and will take my time going through this course.

I started this process knowing that I would not learn this overnight. This will be a marathon and I am excited to see where I can go with this technology.