> study textbooks. Do exercises. Treat it like academic studying
This. Highly recommend Russel & Norvig [1] for high-level intuition and motivation. Then Bishop's "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" [2] and Koller's PGM book [3] for the fundamentals.
Avoid MOOCs, but there are useful lecture videos, e.g. Hugo Larochelle on belief propagation [4].
FWIW this is coming from a mechanical engineer by training, but self-taught programmer and AI researcher. I've been working in industry as an AI research engineer for ~6 years.
Oof those are all dense reads for a new comer... For a first dip into the waters I usually suggest Introduction to Statistical Learning. Then from there move into PRML or ESL.
Were you first introduced to core ML through Bishop? +1 for a solid reading list.
PGMs were in fashion in 2012, but by 2014 when Deep Learning had become all the rage, I think PGMs almost disappeared from the picture. Do people even remember PGMs exist now in 2019?
This. Highly recommend Russel & Norvig [1] for high-level intuition and motivation. Then Bishop's "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" [2] and Koller's PGM book [3] for the fundamentals.
Avoid MOOCs, but there are useful lecture videos, e.g. Hugo Larochelle on belief propagation [4].
FWIW this is coming from a mechanical engineer by training, but self-taught programmer and AI researcher. I've been working in industry as an AI research engineer for ~6 years.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approa...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informat...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-Princi...
[4] https://youtu.be/-z5lKPHcumo