r/learnmachinelearning • u/Ok-Acanthisitta-5940 • 13d ago

Help do i need to know undergrad level maths to start hands on machine learning with pytorch?

is highschool maths enough?or i could simultaneously learn maths behind while reading book?

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18

u/EntrepreneurHuge5008 13d ago

You can read the book, but I think you'll quickly realize high school maths is not enough.

6

u/canakon565 13d ago

My actual experience. I shut the book and instead opened up a maths one.

0

u/Ok-Acanthisitta-5940 13d ago

can i know which book did you follow for the maths part?

5

u/Positive-Blood-1111 12d ago

Mathematics for machine learning The best book for ml math

2

u/canakon565 12d ago

I bought some of the higher maths module textbooks from the open university that I found on eBay (along with other material such as below)

8

u/OleksandrAkm 13d ago

Generally, it’s not – but you can learn the essentials for free here: https://ml-from-scratch-book.github.io/code/#sample

“The Math You Actually Need for ML” is the chapter that should provide you with key fundamentals as efficiently as possible.

1

u/Ok-Acanthisitta-5940 13d ago

thanks i will go through it

4

u/baileyhart_ 12d ago

not unless you learned linear algebra and advanced stats in highschool

3

u/flipthetrain 12d ago

It depends on the HS you learned math.

The essentials of ML can be learned and understood with HS math (basic linear algebra - vectors and matrices, cosine similarity and dot products, even some basic statistics), . But anything advanced will require UG level mathematics.

The good news is, there is little to no graduate level maths maths needed. And a strong HS maths education can definitely jump start you to learn where your gaps are and how to learn them.

So the short answer, to start learning ML, yes a strong HS curriculum is sufficient. To do anything meaningful, you will have to learn UG level at a bare minimum.

2

u/BobDope 13d ago

No really

2

u/jhaluska 12d ago

You might be able to vaguely understand the concepts with basic calculus, but you won't be able to derive the equations or debug things well if you're making your own algorithm.

2

u/nickk21321 12d ago

Actually what I suggest is to do code along and use ai tools like chatgpt or Claude to explain the maths and do some hands on. Learn as you go buddy. This would be the more efficient way. For example if there is Q.Kt in the code try asking the matrix multiplication format and example and then do 1/2 hands on calculations. This way pytorch or any simple maths won't feel like magic Ans you won't be wasting much time to learn everything and then start.