Ask HN: Advice for acquiring machine learning techniques?

6 points by anxiously ↗ HN
I am an engineer and I am familiar with some techniques and methods but feel they are likely ~8 years behind the current techniques.

How can I best learn more machine learning techniques, technology and apply it to my problem domains?

4 comments

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Work in the field and solve problems. I've worked in the field for a short time, around six years, but with great variety: banking, transportation, energy, telecommunications, employment, health and well-being for seniors, security, traffic, public relations, commerce, retail and distribution, etc.

I've never been bored. I've never had a "same-different day". We eventually built a machine learning platform to ship faster.

In that case, consulting may be good for you.

Old techniques are just as good as the new ones :) If you have a specific problem you are trying to solve, I'd recommend just reading papers and looking up things you don't understand. Otherwise, if you're just looking for general knowledge, a class could be helpful.
Look at past Kaggle competitions with similar characteristics to your problem; many (most?) competitions have threads in the discussion by top ranked participants detailing their approach.