June 24th, 2023 (edited August 12th, 2024)
I finished up a three week stay on a rural rice farm in Japan, and I came home with the goal of doing AI/ML research in college. The start of undergrad looms in mid-August, so I have around a month and a half to do some learning. I have set aside my grand plans to study ML foundations and will focus on practice: statistics and applied deep learning.
From some browsing and chatting with ML researchers on twitter it seems a strong foundation in statistics will compound in value as I learn ML.
My primary resource will be the often recommended book All of Statistics I will read through at least the first 6 chapters, take notes, and do the exercises assigned in the CMU course
I will experiment with two new study techniques (mostly to figure out what will work for me in college). First, I will typeset all my solutions in LaTeX. Second, I have been making extensive use of Anki for learning Japanese, and I will use it to memorize important theorems and rules. These are both are experiments so if I don't like how they work for me I will drop them and go back to studying with my old techniques.
The theory of ML/DL is interesting, but I need a foundation in practical application to justify the investment of learning it. I will focus on learning enough of deep learning basics (algorithms, frameworks, etc.) to train simple models and build apps.
I have chosen to follow the popular online course fast.ai My intuition here tells me the choice of course doesn't matter too much, the important part is that I start playing with deep learning immediately.
The goal is that I should be able to learn a piece of theory (from a paper, textbook, etc.) and implement it in PyTorch with these practical skills. I am essentially learning lab technique early in my career so that research becomes more efficient.
The end goal of this learning project is to produce a simple yet interesting app or tool that will function as proof I am capable of applying ML techniques to a real project. Where my interests and skills will lie after completing this learning seminar are unclear, but I will work with this goal in mind. Additionally, I will keep blogging updates and insights.
