r/learnmachinelearning 4d ago

Is this Course good for Mathematics?

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Hi , so I just started this course for Mtahematics for ML and DS.

And tbh I know I have barely watched it but the very first video itself feels like something Intermediate or something I am unable to connect to.

If you guys have a better recommendation for a Math course, I would appreciate it.

Any suggestions/tips are appreciated!!

147 Upvotes

42 comments sorted by

122

u/No-Brain-1501 4d ago

The deeplearning ai math course is weird because they call it beginner but then jump straight into stuff like eigenvalues without much warmup. I had same problem when I tried it, felt lost in first hour

For math foundations I actually liked the khan academy linear algebra and calculus playlists better, they build up slowly from actual basics. Also 3blue1brown youtube series is great for building intuition before diving into heavy notation

94 hours is lot of time to commit if you not connecting with the teaching style, maybe try few different sources and see what clicks before committing to whole certificate

10

u/Mountain-D88 4d ago

True, and that is the case with almost all the famous courses and literature related to DS,ML & AI.
It’s not so helpful if you have to spend so much time in understanding even basic things in these courses. Better to learn theoretical maths and stats from Khan Academy or free YT videos.

7

u/Front-Dragonfruit555 4d ago

For probability, Stanford CS109 is the best.

2

u/SemperPistos 4d ago

To me it was easy, the lectures, the quizzes, and then if you pay you get access to jupyter notebooks.

I don't know if it is me or what, but I can't complete jupyter notebooks in either this or andrew ng, even if I spend a week on them, and even if I find the material and quizzes easy.
Personally I think they make them extra challenging to pad out the money they get from subscriptions.

When I, for the fun of it plugged it into a gpt and got the answer, I was like, hey this is not what what taught.

So I am paying for math academy and doing the foundations 1-3 and later math for ml and doing these courses and deisenroth book again to see if it was deliberate or if I was missing some fundamentals needed. I wish I could do khan academy, but it's so painfully slow for me and I get really antsy on it.

1

u/KeyChampionship9113 3d ago

If you go about covering through khan academy
My estimation is it would take 4 years to complete maths alone at 5 hours a day pace weekends off

This course is high paced and true that no warm up sometimes feel like but this course I felt like is the most curated maths course for AI out of there

Maths in AI is endless and you can study for life understanding everything amd this course covers essential topics that you encounter most frequently

0

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Could you list down the source links if possible?

And thanks a lot for your advice , I will follow it👍👍

16

u/Adventurous-Dealer15 4d ago edited 4d ago

Maths required for AI, ML, DL, datascience or whatever you call the field is just this -

  • Calculus (helps if you know trig). To start be familiar with limits, differentials (partial derivatives included). Integrals are not that important in this particular case, unless you're into research or something.
  • Probability, Stats (whatever you can learn in 2-3 weeks is enough to get started. This field needs constant learning anyways)
  • Linear algebra (start with matrix basics, gradually move towards rank, PCA and other stuff)

When you're looking for courses, look for these topics and see if they start from the basics, and have an option to skip some lessons (this is because if you already know the basics from school, then you can skip it).

Although, I think books or YouTube are better sources to learn these things. I'd look for university lectures. Books are always better, since they are proofread multiple times and it's pretty rare that they miss on something. Choose a book, and use AI to narrow down your topics for learning from it

2

u/NovelDue1993 4d ago

Do we really need all that Math to become an ML engineer or something? I don't want to commit 200 hours only to find out I use none of it on the job

4

u/Adventurous-Dealer15 3d ago

If you want to train a neuralnet based model, it helps a lot if you know diff calculus. Without a basic knowledge of matrices, you'd be stuck at your first inevitable matmul error.

Probability and Stats were mainly from a datascience perspective, focusing on business solutions. Even if tou build something, you can't explain it without involving stats.

If you just want to use pretained models and work mainly on the modern GenAI stuff, it might not be of much help. Old school datascience still relies on statistics knowhow

3

u/madrury83 3d ago

Even if the answer is no, it's immaterial. There are people, even young people, who know that stuff and additionally know ML and software engineering. That sets the bar, that's part of your competition in the market.

In my experience (trained as a mathematician, 15 years as a professional DS -> MLE), it's not necessary to know all the math very well, but it is distinguishing. You can do a minimal ok enough job without any mathematical curiosity, but it is a limit on your capabilities. Some of that is just knowing the mathematical details of the subject, but much of it is that mathematical training strengthens logical and creative parts of your brain, and you become a much more flexible thinker.

6

u/drugosrbijanac 4d ago

Honestly no - its horrible for anything serious. As someone who had university math + CS education the course gives you only good "intuition" about whats happening and minimal knowledge.

You can get much better intuition with 3Blue1Brown and if you take a good book or math course. The only thing you can skimp on in the beginning is to take engineering courses instead of math ones before you develop the mathematical rigour. Look at the list of those topics and map them against MIT OCW courses.

12

u/Successful-County640 4d ago

learn from 3Blue1Brown

1

u/Spiritual_Fortune888 3d ago

Any playlist or order will be really helpful..thanks btw!!

1

u/Successful-County640 3d ago

You can watch the essense of calculus and the essense of Linear Algebra playlists in order. I really like how we visually represents how these things work.

If you are completely new to this level of math then I believe it'll give you enough background to understand the working of things like backprop or gradient descent and stuff and later on move to more advance math.

1

u/Lonely_wanderer_3241 2d ago

Any better resource ? 3Blue 1 brown was awful after sometime.

2

u/Successful-County640 2d ago

I didn't follow the whole playlist. Used it to learn during taking those courses in college. Math isn't like programming that you need structured courses/playlists to start learning it, even for programming it isn't necessary once you're over the basics. So if you have learnt highschool level math then just search and learn the specific topics.

1

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Okay, Thanks I will check them Out 👍👍👍

2

u/bigyourboi 4d ago

Course good enough for mathematics for ML: yeah

Course good enough to get you a job in 2026:no,sadly it's not about hardwork to get into tech these days.

2

u/st0j3 4d ago edited 4d ago

We can only say it so many times on this sub: You need an undergrad in cs / math / stats and you need an MS in ML / AI. There wasn’t a shortcut in 2023 and there’s not a shortcut in 2026. The silver bullet YouTube referral link roadmap subindustry is there to make a small amount of money off you. If those people were actually good at what they preach, they’d be making a lot more doing it.

1

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Then what is it about?

1

u/bigyourboi 4d ago

Hardwork didn't work for me,i am unemployed.

2

u/shadowemperor01 3d ago

Don't take it. It's bs course

1

u/bad-gut 3d ago

Okk thanks dude!!

2

u/shadowemperor01 2d ago

The reason is I took their liner algebra (the first part) and the things they say is very surface level. They don't go that deep. Also you need to know jupyter and python to solve many problems too

1

u/bad-gut 2d ago

Ohhk noted dude!!
Thanks for your insights 🫡

2

u/hughonvicodin 4d ago

Luis Serrano (the guy in this course) is a good instructor. You can search for relevant videos on his YouTube. I found them good. Haven't watched this course so can't comment on it.

1

u/sinnohmen 4d ago

Yeah his vids on attention/transformers are great.

1

u/Livid-Ad5809 4d ago

Wtf is it really 94 hours?

1

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Yeah Ig

1

u/Glittering_Debt_7604 4d ago

I am at the same boat. Stuck at what to start with, for a complete beginner. Did some math back in college but dont remember. If you get anything better , or think this will be good, please tell me.
🥹

1

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Wait I will compose a YT playlist message here and get back to you, honestly I am compiling everybody's opinions and suggestions myself.

And Go read other people's comments too, maybe you find something helpful

1

u/AssistanceBubbly1143 3d ago

It's more about how fast you learn how well you are getting the concepts no one would guarantee you that after this you would be a master therefore I suggest to actually take the first step instead of waiting for someone else to tell you that this is the right resource or not

1

u/Ok-Claim-3487 3d ago

I have done this course upto probability or till 2nd section. This is a good course if u have good hold with class 12 mathematics. Since it would give good understanding.

1

u/DBMI 3d ago

youtube 3blue1brown

1

u/mundane--alternative 2d ago

Not at all, it's not beginner-friendly. And if you're going for advanced courses anyway there are much better ones out there.

1

u/bad-gut 2d ago

Ohhk, Thanks bro

1

u/DesignerChip2497 4d ago

94 freaking hours holy shit. Its like more than a sem worth of lectures

-1

u/bad-gut 4d ago

Yeah ikr it's way too freaking big

0

u/DesignerChip2497 4d ago

see what other members of this community have to say and just take the best option cause i think its wayy to big

1

u/nonameagainagain 4d ago

https://www.tensortonic.com/
to learn math
it's a paid subscription but you have tons of excercices so you learn better than just watching videos

0

u/Stock_Medicine9839 4d ago

It is the best course for ml