Udacity Year in Review

Udacity online course highlighted itssuccesses and milestones in 2016. 

• Udacity currently offers 159 courses
• Udacity's site-wide busiest time for learning is the Month of October
• Student watched the Developing Android Apps video by Google the most
• Read the full article here Udacity 2016 Year in Review

Udacity Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree - skills you will learn

• Sklearn python machine learning library
• Jupyter Notebook
• Panda

You will not spend too much time on the following, so please review, study, before proceeding to the course:

• Reviewing linear algebra 
• Reviewing probability
• Reviewing statistics

Subscribe to our mailing list

Email Address *

Udacity Intensive Connect Data Analyst Machine Learning Nanodegrees

Udacity is making two nanodegrees available for Udacity Connect or Udacity intensive: Data Analyst and Machine Learning Engineers. Its in-person meetup lessons utilizes the online material but features a bootcamp-like part-time learning opportunity with industry / professional classmates. Here are some PROs and CONs of Udacity Intensive Connect

• PROs
• Affordable price tag
• The intensive class unlocks the corresponding online material for months, it is a much better deal than Udacity expensive monthly nanodegree price tag well north of $100
• It's a bargain compared to coding bootcamps
• Udacity markets its program as : bootcamp level intensity, in-person collaboration, accountability, part-time, no need to leave or quit your current job
• Fast paced, stringent project timeline
• Attend classes with diverse and experienced industry professionals
• In-person lectures that are more targeted and easily adjusted for the needs of the class. High quality, in-person lectures, Q&A opportunities, one-on-one help. 
• CONs
• It is still expensive the price tag will be near $1000 or more
• The physical location may be an hour away from your current location. I had to commute from San Francisco to San Jose. Ultimately it didn't work out. 
• It still relies heavily on the online videos. If those videos didn't speak to you, the in-person interactions may not be able to shift your learning retention.  
• Fast paced, stringent project timeline
• Attend classes with diverse and experienced industry professionals. Not always beginner friendly
• It is a significant time commitment
• A lot of studying on the side, additional studying, looking up additional materials is required. The online videos will not provide all the information needed to complete the projects.
• Significant in-person time commitment. Not attending the sessions will cause you to lose a lot of materials as they are not available online. It will put you behind schedule. I had to miss sessions because of business trips and it was hard to catch up.

Conclusion: for me personally, Udacity Connect or Udacity intensive helped me finish the Machine Learning Engineering Nanodegree. It has some rough spots as the program is in its early stages. But it is improving fast! Over the few months of learning, I could see the program changing. This program did get me start to think about Machine Learning in depth. I have discovered my interest. Once you know what machine learning is, it is easy to learn it online. A lot of time will be spent playing with datasets hands-on any way. Without those practices, it is not possible to take on a real job as a machine learning engineer. Your connect experience can vary with the instructor and classmates, as all inter-personal interactions do. 

The holy grail question: can you become a machine learning engineer after completing the nanodegree?

No, your knowledge, experience will not be sufficient. People get Phd's in this field. But it will open you up for some pretty awesome career paths.  More practice, knowledge acquisition is needed. You will need a strong portfolio of exemplifying projects. You will become a much better data analyst, putting you closer to a data scientist role than an analyst role. The Nanodegree will not be sufficient to get you a job at Google. However, if you are already experienced, already in the industry, just need some technical skills to climb over a hill, this course can really help you make the transition internally. 

Udacity Machine Learning Nanodegree Instructors Review

• Georgia Tech Udacity online master degree instructors
• This nanodegree utilizes video clips from the Georgia Tech Udacity computer science and engineering classes. The instructors are obviously highly qualified, technical and academic, but give sometimes nerdy and perhaps less engaging and relevant jokes and try to forcefully inject a sense of humor into the learning material. It didn't work out so well. Their explanation is professional and academic but less accessible to beginners. MINUS 
• sebastian thrun and katie malone
• Sebastian Thrun was a professor, successful entrepreneur, founder of Udacity, and the lead for many important Google businesses such as the self driving car. He's a really good teacher and gives valuable information on how machine learning is directly used in the industry. He is a god-like teacher in machine learning. PLUS!
• Katie Malone was a student and a researcher and now a creator of several Udacity Machine Learning courses. She is great at explaining difficult concepts to beginners and advanced learners. She uses real life research examples, data sets from Kaggle, and simplifies the problems into workable problem sets for students. PLUS!
• In-person lead Udacity Connect Intensive
• If you join the Udacity Connect Intensive, you may get an in-person lead. He is usually a very qualified tutor and instructor. He/ she may not have the experience that Sebastian has, but is perhaps more practical and accessible for beginners. My session lead was once a Caltech lecturer, so he could go beginner friendly and also expert friendly. 
• Conclusion: Udacity instructors are industry experts, academics, and highly experienced professionals in machine learning. However, despite each clip is high quality, the Udacity Machine Learning Nanodegree curriculum is patched together not in a cohesive manner. This curriculum will pose significant difficulty for people starting from scratch. Experienced professionals, professionals who had exposures to machine learning will have an easier time. 

Subscribe to our mailing list

Email Address *

Python crowned as the language of choice of data scientists

kaggle, a popular dataset data science machine learning competition site revealed in its recent Year In Review 2016 newsletter that Python has surpassed R as the language of choice for data scientists in recent years.this trend has been continuing for a few years. Kaggle's kernel language is now overwhelming Python despite that R was still popular and fresh in 2015. Why do you think that's the case? no revelation on Kaggle yet. Could it be because of increasing popularity of machine learning and specifically deep learning? Python works so well with ML

Codecademy Walkthrough SQL Table Transformation 01

Codecademy Walkthrough SQL Table Transformation 01
using SELECT * FROM tablename LIMIT 10;

How to be viral on Imgur and Reddit?

It is harder to be viral on Reddit and Imgur, one of the most popular image sharing, story telling site on the internet. It is not the best place to sell product, but it surely it is the best place to spread ideas and causes. It is also a great place to stay on top of current news and learn lifehacks. Like all forums, especially producthunt and hackernews, Imgur has its own algorithm to test out if a post should stay on its FrontPage, which essentially features the post and makes it viral. Below is a screenshot that has made it to the FrontPage, it also happens to explain how Imgur evaluates and weighs posts. Be aware, this is likely NOT the actual algorithm, but the actual model will look very similar to this.