Introduction to Deep Learning (CMU)
165 points
1 month ago
| 9 comments
| deeplearning.cs.cmu.edu
| HN
sashank_1509
1 month ago
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I remember taking this course at CMU, I had no knowledge of deep learning before this course. After this course, I had trained over 75 models in the assignments, implemented a pytorch backend and a significantly large course project that I was confident to launch my career in Deep Learning. Cannot recommend this course enough, you need to do all the assignments to get maximum value out of it and it can be intense. But think of it as a bootcamp for machine learning. I still find these course materials useful in interviews.
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firefax
1 month ago
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>You will need familiarity with basic calculus (differentiation, chain rule), linear algebra, and basic probability.

So if I'm at the point that math skills, rather than programming skills are my barrier to interesting courses like this one, does anyone know of any good resources? I don't seem able to teach myself calc from a book like I did Python.

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somethingsome
1 month ago
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I know many of them

Probability https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOpr_A7B9SriE_i...

Basic algebra and calculus https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/

Real analysis https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0E754696F72137EC

All those are really basics and start from (almost) nothing

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noisy_boy
1 month ago
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Do you have any links for someone who did maths and stats in uni and basically forgot most of it (except very basic algebra)? I would like to wake up my near-dead math brain cells.
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somethingsome
1 month ago
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At which level? And pure mathematics or engineering or other?
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noisy_boy
1 month ago
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From the point of view of understanding the underlying theory and maths of machine learning.
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somethingsome
1 month ago
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Those 3 courses are then pure gems :)

After that, I can't recommend enough Bishop, machine learning, and the Bishop on deep learning (books)

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dimatura
1 month ago
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I took this course the first semester it was given. There was one TA, and now there's 24! Fun fact: The TA was the writer of Aqua's 90s hit "Doctor Jones".
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npalli
1 month ago
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>> The TA was the writer of Aqua's 90s hit "Doctor Jones".

Soren Rasted?? Which year was it. Mind blown.

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meccabrepapa
1 month ago
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I am a 1year experienced software engineer in a small company. I have been learning Machine Learning recently for company's project. Do you recommend me this course? I want to learn the concept systematically.
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rottc0dd
1 month ago
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There was another hn page where discussion happened on this topic. Please check following comment thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43391604

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43395172

These resources were helpful for me. Note that, [1] and [2] are concerned about systematic understanding rather than hands on. [3] is a hands on exercise to build neural networks from ground up.

1. A fantastic resource and best resourse IMO, for getting probablistic perspective about machine learning from ground up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MuDZIAzBMY&list=PLoROMvodv4...

2. Another good free course.

https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse

3. For hands on after getting some knowledge and building things from ground up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMj-3S1tku0&list=PLAqhIrjkxb...

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meccabrepapa
1 month ago
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thanks a lot
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mliker
1 month ago
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I recommend checking out this survey of free ML resources: https://www.trybackprop.com/blog/top_ml_learning_resources

No doubt CMU's intro to deep learning course is good, you might find some other goodies in that link too.

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ascarshen
1 month ago
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The most valuable part is the assignments and homework. If possible, where can I find the code?
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fxwin
1 month ago
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Seems like they're not available to non-students, but I'm happy to be proven wrong
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BinaryMachine
1 month ago
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I agree, this only is useful for passive learning from watching lecture videos, which is not an ideal way to soak in the material. Even if the quizzes and assignments are just instructions id be happy to experiment on my own.
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janalsncm
1 month ago
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I think for someone who hasn’t seen the material at all before it would be a lot for a semester. They don’t know what backpropagation is but by the end will understand a diffusion model? It’s ambitious, I think.

The other thing is this seems to be very CNN heavy. Four lectures on the topic seems like a lot.

Also, I don’t see embeddings explicitly mentioned as a topic. They’re a huge component of industrial research, and creating good embeddings and retrieving them quickly is a topic I feel students should also be exposed to. (Yes, they mention “representation” with autoencoders but quite frankly the code bit is generally not useful for similarity metrics.)

Finally, it would be nice to expose students to multimodal learning. Something like CLIP would be pretty neat to expose students to. It’s a great insight when you realize that you can train projections of multiple modalities into a shared high dimensional space. If they’re going to cover diffusion models certainly complexity isn’t a concern.

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berniep
1 month ago
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Can you recommend any tutorials/resources about designing and training simple multi-modal models like CLIP? Or should I just be reading the papers and following along?
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janalsncm
1 month ago
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Well, the core idea is to train a text encoder and an image encoder jointly with in-batch negatives. In other words, a two tower model maximizing the diagonal and minimizing everything else. They have pseudo code in the paper.
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mliker
1 month ago
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> They don’t know what backpropagation is but by the end will understand a diffusion model?

That seems plausible to learn in a semester long course, especially at an institution like CMU

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diebeforei485
1 month ago
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> I think for someone who hasn’t seen the material at all before it would be a lot for a semester. They don’t know what backpropagation is but by the end will understand a diffusion model? It’s ambitious, I think.

Welcome to CMU :)

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noisy_boy
1 month ago
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It is not clear to me if people who are not CMU students can get their assignments/quizes checked by the autograder.
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Isamu
1 month ago
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There’s a Giant Eagle auditorium in Baker Hall?
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ellisv
1 month ago
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That was my reaction too! I don't remember ever seeing one but I'm sure things have changed.
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Isamu
1 month ago
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So they got money from Giant Eagle to renovate, because they are spending all their money on administration of student experience
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vivzkestrel
1 month ago
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in person or remote? open sourced like MIT or closed source? no details are mentioned whatsoever
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yamrzou
1 month ago
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If you go to Menu > Lectures, you'll find links to the Youtube videos.
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