Linear algebra. Bayesian statistics. MUST know these inside out, upside down.
Vector calculus. Convex optimization.
A boatload of machine learning literature. The ideas coalescing into deep learning are based more than a decade of research.
If you know nothing about math... I can't imagine getting to the point of understanding deep learning (which is a fairly rapidly evolving area) without at least 2-3 years of very hard work.
This class is a reasonable attempt to give a quick intro to one major source for DBNs https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets understanding this course is a good benchmark.
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What does it take to be good at machine learning such as this? In terms of mathematics, and computer science knowledge?
I know how to code through self learning, and I've pretty much solely done web development. So I barely know much CS. Also not very good at math.
So what are the essential prerequisites you would say are necessary for doing neat, useful stuff with machine learning?
Math. math. math.
Linear algebra. Bayesian statistics. MUST know these inside out, upside down.
Vector calculus. Convex optimization.
A boatload of machine learning literature. The ideas coalescing into deep learning are based more than a decade of research.
If you know nothing about math... I can't imagine getting to the point of understanding deep learning (which is a fairly rapidly evolving area) without at least 2-3 years of very hard work.
This class is a reasonable attempt to give a quick intro to one major source for DBNs https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets understanding this course is a good benchmark.
Definitely a solid foundation in linear algebra and statistics (mostly Bayesian) are necessary for understanding how the algorithms work. Check out the wiki portals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning) and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence) for overviews of the most common approaches.
Also, Andrew Ng's coursera course on machine learning is amazing (https://www.coursera.org/course/ml) as well as Norvig and Thrun's Udacity course on AI (https://www.udacity.com/course/cs271)
I ran through Udacity's CS373 course first (https://www.udacity.com/course/cs373). It was neat.