Note for anyone signing up for this who has been in industry for a while: the prerequisites for this class really are prerequisites and it can be quite difficult to follow along if you're too busy trying to get your head around the basic math. You can check out the existing lectures on iTunes U to see what I mean.

Completing the Khan Academy playlists for Linear Algebra and Probability would be pretty useful if you want to be prepared in time for October.

I took a look at the ones already online and downloaded them a while back. Also went through Khans stuff on the areas you mentioned after i realised i needed just a refresher on a few of the areas. After the refresher following the lectures was much easier.

I did a bachelors and a masters in comp-sci at usyd and unsw in aus, it was good but i remember not getting into the depth that the stanford lectures did so im quite excited to get back into it. Also decided to take some time of work to work on a few of my own things so got alot of time to have fun with the materials.

BTW thanks to standford for this material, its totally awesome :)

I was watching some older Andrew Ng Intro to ML lectures [1], and found Gilbert Strang's linear algebra [2] movies super useful as background. You'll definitely want to feel strong on linear algebra before taking the class.

[1] http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning [2] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-...

Like a few other people here, I took this class recently. I did well, but I don't feel like I truly understand material until I teach it.

That being said, if anybody here has questions on the material, I'd love to help you out in some way. Unfortunately, there is no personal messaging feature on HN, so we might have to resort to emails (or maybe a subreddit?).

I realize there is an official class forum, so please tell me if you have any interest in some sort of 3rd party support system :-)

Wow ... our own TA! That would be neat.

I just started watching this course on iTunesU and was wishing I had someone to ask basic clarification questions to.

Would using Convore be appropriate for this purpose?

EDIT: I created one ... ml-class (HN support group) http://t.co/0Ahtgw5

Is there a Google Group?

I took this class as CS 229 at Stanford, and will attest that it's pretty damn awesome (easily one of the best classes I've been able to take). The course really provides a thorough exploration of a lot of the main techniques in machine learning, and Prof. Ng also presents it in a very engaging and understandable way. This was one of the few classes where I enjoyed my 3-hour long midterm!

You can see the materials from this course's previous incarnation at http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/

I wonder if you could ask if the old problem sets for CS 229 could be made available without requiring a Stanford id?

Thanks - was wondering what class this matched too. Will probably do this instead of the Norvig AI class.

I ended up taking the Norvig AI class after this one and felt that a large majority of the material was also covered in the ML class, but usually more rigorously in the latter and as a means to more interesting stuff. If you feel like covering the material with a definite mathematical bent, I would recommend checking out this class.

so you are saying this class is more practical and that one is more bent on mathematical theory?

I would say that the AI class is a good overview for the field of AI - but Machine Learning is a good in-depth discussion of the machine learning approaches, which will generally also expose you to a lot of other related AI concepts.

Thanks for that info. Now I think I will not formally enroll in the intro to AI and focus more on ML class. Since I can only truly focus on one such class at a time it would be best to enroll in something I can apply directly.

Thank you for your input here - I was considering the same question as well (AI vs. ML).

It's a tough choice. Honestly, I'm probably better off in the Norvig class. It's been 15 years since my college AI classes.

What "norvig AI" class?

http://www.ai-class.com/ - the equivalent of Stanford's CS 221.

Gotta love how Hacker News is listed under Press, which leads to this discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2824780

Signed up for this and AI.

Anyone know how many hours per week will be required? I am finishing up my 3 year distance learning MSc this month, so will have around 20 hours per week for these two courses. Hope that will be enough.

The video on the page mentions an average of ~10 hours per week.

I've been meaning to follow along with the online collection of lectures from this course at some point, so I guess now's the time to actually dive in. I'm interested to see how a very rigorous course will be adapted to something that looks very similar to the Khan Academy model.

I took CS 229 years ago as an undergrad and still think about things from it all the time.

i've been using my cs 229 notes for class and work, easily the best overview of a lot of concepts that i've been able to find!