Top all-time · #398
Neural networks and deep learning
Personal blog · neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.comaimath
Neural networks and deep learning is a personal blog at neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com about ai and math. Since 2013, 137 different Hacker News readers have linked it 178 times, most often “Neural Networks and Deep Learning: A Principle-Oriented Approach Free EBook”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Often recommended · 25 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked as a free online book that explains neural networks and backpropagation to beginners, often as a first reading after a course or alongside Karpathy's notes. One commenter finds its terminology misleading.
- Recommended for · 25 comments
- Called excellently written, a perfect overview and comprehensible; 'helped me really grasp the topic'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning: A Principle-Oriented Approach Free EBook67 people · 88 mentions · first linked 2013-11-25
- A Free Online Book on Neural Networks and Deep Learning23 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2014-08-05
- Using neural nets to recognize handwritten digits14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2013-11-25
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning: An Introduction12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2014-04-08
- A visual proof that neural nets can approximate any function12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2014-09-02
- Is there a simple algorithm for intelligence?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-07-10
- How the backpropagation algorithm works4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-04-14
- Improving the way neural networks learn2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-08-01
- Will neural networks and deep learning soon lead to artificial intelligence?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-26
- Neural networks and deep learning2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-26
What Hacker News says?
Gain background knowledge first, it will make your life much easier. It will also make the difference between just running black box libraries and understanding what's happening. Make sure you're comfortable with linear algebra (matrix manipulation) and probability theory. You don't need advanced probability theory, but you should be comfortable with the notions of discrete and continuous random variables and probab…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?”Submitted Deep learning as a story · 361 points
HN discussionCourses You MUST Take: 1. Machine Learning by Andrew Ng ( https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning ) /// Class notes: ( http://holehouse.org/mlclass/index.html ) 2. Yaser Abu-Mostafa’s Machine Learning course which focuses much more on theory than the Coursera class but it is still relevant for beginners.( https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html ) 3. Neural Networks and Deep Learning (Recommended by Google B…
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on “Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?”Submitted A visual proof that neural nets can approximate any function as a story · 341 points
HN discussionI liked this one quite a lot: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com
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on “Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?”Submitted A visual proof that neural nets can compute any function as a story · 259 points
HN discussionI very much like Michael Nielsen's book Neural Networks and Deep Learning. It has a great introduction with examples and code you can run locally. Really nice to get started. http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com Also Fermat's Library is going to be annotating the book, which should make it even more accessible: http://fermatslibrary.com/list/neural-networks-and-deep-lear...
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on “Ask HN: How to get started with machine learning?”Submitted A visual proof that neural nets can compute any function as a story · 217 points
HN discussionThis demonstration goes really well with Michael Nielsen's http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ . At the bottom of the page the author gives a shout out to Nielsen, Bengio, and others. For someone (like me) who's done a bit of reading but not much implementation, this playground is fantastic!
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on “Tinker with a Neural Network in Your Browser”Submitted Improving the way neural networks learn as a story · 149 points
HN discussionMichael Nielson's book/site on Neural Networks helped me really grasp the topic. http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ H.L. Royden's Analysis was a book that made real analysis click when I read it on my own time in High School. It's simple enough so an intelligent kid can read it and think that simplicity can allow a solid understanding that some people can miss reading more sophisticated book. It's also true t…
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on “Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?”Submitted How the backpropagation algorithm works as a story · 140 points
HN discussion`` vs $() I really appreciate authors who attack ambiguity or non-obvious equivalence in a subject head on. It's one of those aspects of explaining that takes to heart the perspective of the learner. Another recent example I encountered is from the online book http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com , there are some confusing ambiguities and plain misleading contradictions in NN terminologies, one being: multi-laye…
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on “Things I Wish I'd Known About Bash”Submitted Neural Networks and Deep Learning: An Introduction as a story · 138 points
HN discussionAlthough 3b1b's videos are awesome, his NN videos are heavily inspired by this: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ . Even the code on his github page is taken from there.
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on “Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio win Turing Award”Submitted Is there a simple algorithm for intelligence? as a story · 129 points
HN discussion1. http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap4.html , https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/parallel-distributed-processi... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism
Comment linking /chap4.html
on “The new silent majority: People who don't tweet”Submitted Using neural nets to recognize handwritten digits as a story · 121 points
HN discussionHere are the resources I found useful: ========================================== Advices from Open AI, Facebook AI leaders Courses You MUST Take: Machine Learning by Andrew Ng ( https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning ) /// Class notes: ( http://holehouse.org/mlclass/index.html ) Yaser Abu-Mostafa’s Machine Learning course which focuses much more on theory than the Coursera class but it is still relevant fo…
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on “Ask HN: Best way to get started with AI?”Submitted A visual proof that neural nets can compute any function as a story · 116 points
HN discussionIt's really important not to skip the math. As a friend once said to me, doing deep learning without understanding the math is like gambling. It's fine to initially take a more practical, project-based approach for the sake of staying motivated, and you'll retain things better if you have project goals in mind, but, the math is that important. The good news is that compared to other technical fields, the math is als…
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on “Ask HN: Best way to get started with AI?”Submitted Why are deep neural networks hard to train? as a story · 83 points
HN discussionEvery beginner in Neural networks should probablystart with this and follow with Karpathy's http://karpathy.github.io/neuralnets and may be later on http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/
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on “Neural Networks Demystified”Submitted Neural Networks and Deep Learning as a story · 56 points
HN discussionWell, this is pretty good http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ Also these lecture notes https://github.com/joanbruna/stat212b
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on “Neural Networks Demystified”Submitted Neural Networks and Deep Learning: A Principle-Oriented Approach Free EBook as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThis book is a good practical introduction that walks you through the basic ideas as you develop some basic functionality. http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ I'm often pretty skeptical of e-books and self publications, but the above link is pretty good (and the video series linked here references it as well.) The Goodfellow book that another commenter mentioned is a high-quality survey of the field and a nice…
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on “What is backpropagation and what is it doing? [video]”Submitted Neural Networks and Deep Learning as a story · 11 points
HN discussionFrom the yc reading list 2015 [ http://themacro.com/articles/2015/12/yc-2015-reading-list/ ], they recommend [for Neural Networks] this book: http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/ It's more about understanding than "learning tools."
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on “Google's Free Deep Learning Course”Submitted Will neural networks and deep learning soon lead to artificial intelligence? as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
