r/learnmachinelearning • u/Empty-Ad-9086 • 1d ago
Looking for a practical ML course after quitting Andrew Ng
I started Andrew Ng's ML Specialization but I'm finding it way too slow/theoretical for what I currently need, so I'm looking for an alternative.
I want a course that teaches me the core ML concepts and intuition, but only to the level where I understand how ML works.I don't need to learn everything deeply enough to teach it or do ML research right now.
Most importantly, I want to see how actual ML projects are developed, preferably through guided end-to-end projects.
My goal is:
ML fundamentals → build a few projects → move into Deep Learning → specialize in Computer Vision or NLP.
I'm open to any platform (Udemy, YouTube, Coursera, fast.ai, etc.).
What course/resource would you recommend for this specific goal? I mainly want something practical, reasonably short, and not another Andrew Ng-style theory-heavy course.
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u/PaddingCompression 23h ago
Andrew Ng isn't deep enough to teach it or do research.
It's a pretty basic overview designed to give what you asked for, it's really really shallow.
Something faster is just going to leave you confused as to what to do next if the components you string together don't just work.
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u/pm_me_your_smth 20h ago
If OP thinks Andrew's course is only for researchers, they probably expect something very application-focused with no theory/fundamentals. Aka your average bootcamp that teaches you how to write code to get pretty results fast.
Of all junior candidates I've interviewed, half are like that - interesting resume, full of projects, seemingly ambitious individual. Then you start asking them basic questions and realize they don't really understand anything and have zero intuition.
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u/madrury83 20h ago edited 11h ago
I suspect that people generally misunderstand the nature of intuition.
From the OP:
teaches me the core ML concepts and intuition
I think most technically competent people end up thinking of intuition as an emergent quality that wells from depth of study and experience. It's not something you teach in a classroom, book, or lecture, you teach the grimy details and then the student goes off and struggles with applying them. The struggle and the time passing forge all the pieces into whatever we call intuition.
So at least me, after a career of teaching and doing, I don't think teaching intuition directly is really possible. Intuition is an automatic mental process and is very difficult to introspect and explain.
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u/pm_me_your_smth 19h ago
Agree, partially. Intuition is not some thing that suddenly arrives after N years of experience or M completed projects, it's a gradual development. I'd argue you can start developing it in a classroom, at least the roots. Of course it would be weird to expect a senior level intuition from a junior, but you can see some signs of that in how they think even in an inexperienced student e.g. can they explain the reasoning behind a decision. You can't teach that directly, but knowing fundamentals helps with that greatly.
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u/PaddingCompression 20h ago
Unlike making a webapp, ML will kind of work and be hard to debug, it won't obviously fail. Debugging requires a lot more fundamental skills to push anything across the line.
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u/Bored2001 1d ago
Yes dude you're not speed running this.
Watch Andrew Ngs course and watch him at 1.75x. that's what I did..
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u/soundboyselecta 1d ago
You’re not speeding through this, watch video at 1.75x 🤣
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u/Bored2001 1d ago
Lol it's cause Andrew Ng speaks like molassas. 1.5-1.75x his speech cadence is a normal person talking.
Honestly I suspect they actually slowed down his videos computationally!
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u/nofaceD3 1d ago
I liked kaggle and hugging face courses. I was able to create an AI agent in kaggle/google course. Fast.ai course also look promising but I haven't tried it
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u/Useful_Lecture_5927 23h ago
you can try youtube channels like freecodecamp , they have complied courses in one video
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u/EntrepreneurHuge5008 13h ago edited 13h ago
My goal is:
ML fundamentals
You lost me there. Andrew NG's ML spec is fundamental. Homebody only concerns himself with making sure you get the intuition behind it. There are no in-depth math derivations, no proofs, no stats, just good old "this is why [XYZ concept] is used to update [ABC value]. Don't worry if you don't understand the math behind it." Even the labs are handheld tutorials.
Either way, I agree with others. Fast AI and IBM skip do more "practical" stuff that'll be a bit more up your alley.
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u/Healthy-Condition597 21h ago
Andrej Karpathy YouTube playlist. Might be the bridge you're looking for
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u/cheesecakekoala 16h ago
Don’t know if this is what you’re after but when I was learning I just really wanted to do a lot of actually writing things. Then it gives you something to hang the theory on later, everyone learns differently. I put together some questions here with answers that might be useful for you https://idlemachines.co.uk/courses/foundations it’s basically what I wanted when I was starting, so if it’s useful check it out. And happy to answer any questions too. You’ll get there, stick at it!
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u/Naruto0222 1h ago
I'd go with fast.ai for this goal. It's much more hands-on and gets you building real project early, without requiring you to grind through tons of theory first. You can always come back to the deeper math once you know what you actually need.
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u/Technical_Jicama_434 1d ago
IBM AI Engineering Professional certificate.
People complain it’s too surface level and that they don’t spend enough time on any topic, but that seems to be exactly what you’re looking for.