Diving deeper into machine learning.

I’m summarizing the obvious but I did abandon my project this time. I would say in reflection part of it was procrastination but honestly I was struggling in another area and that just derailed me kept me far too preoccupied to think about returning. Although I did keep out hope for at least one week back, it didn’t pan out that way. I’m still glad I started and will probably try again between now and the next dk30.

Regardless, I’m glad I started and got all the work done on it that I did as now I’ll at least be able to dive straight into the content I’m interested in when I do pick it up. Also, the push to deal with some personal stuff is very helpful in the long run. Next time though if such things happen I’ll try to be more deliberate about evaluating when and where I will call it or how to come back into my project.

April 27 ~ Day 5: Complete

Progress Summary: Worked on course and covered parts 19-23. Mostly setup of environment and loading libraries such as Keras to do the ML practical lessons. All worked by the end of the day.

Learnings: Very minimal learnings but did get to see some of the python scripts and manipulate some of the code for accepting practice data from the course.

Personal Notes: Happy to be past setup of the environment and into actually running the code. Did Dk30 before dinner as per plan and am very happy about how it’s flowing in my day. Oddly enough, it the rest of my time that needs more work though luckily it’s not a result of shoving the dk30 into it. No reason to make any adjustments right now though I have made a mental note to continue rewatch of 3blue1brown videos and start reading the more technical resources if I feel up to it in the next few days. I anticipate I’ll be finding the course interesting but not challenging and so that would be a good thing to start working in where I can.

April 26 ~ Day 4: Incomplete

Progress Summary: N/A

Learnings: N/A

Personal Notes: Worked a lot and was really drained at the end of the day. I didn’t manage to pull myself together before the day ended. Not too worried about it but it was not really desired. I don’t think I’ll make any more adjustments yet though.

April 25 ~ Day 3: Complete

Progress Summary: Covered videos 13-18 in udemy course. All conceptual review of what I know about the process of learning and operating of a neural network but also the end of what I know about them also. That said, I’ve come to realize that I had the incorrect impression of this course and the depth it would go into the subject matter. That said, there are many more topics and practical exercises which will do me a lot of good in it so I am excited to be finally past that. With this known I will adapt my approach and take up the given additional reading from the course links as well as the books and resources I have at my disposal as I progress. In this stint in particular there was almost not talk of the actual working of back propagation but one of the links steps through the math of it apparently.

Learnings: Reviewed the operation of a single layer-feed forward network (aka, perceptron) and how such a simple neural network handles processing a set of data and how the network learns by adjusting the weights via cost functions and back propagation.

Personal Notes: Still not a huge fan of the quality of the presentation in this course but it does have value. From here the sections should all be knowledge or experiences I don’t have so I put a big push on to get past it. (not just to make up for missing a few days; a behaviour I’m not a fan of) If the course continues to frustrate rather than help me learn I’ll probably adjust to another resource as my primary learning tool. Aside from that, today I did manage to do it before dinner though it wasn’t the easiest to transition myself into it. I’ll need to work on stopping and clearing my head first before starting the coursework. Perhaps just set a 5 minute timer and clear my head by walking outside, an exercise set or some meditation in that 5 minutes. Also, I will probably need to time myself more when I work on the coursework as well as I completely neglected that aspect today (and did over double set time). Overall though, that’s progress and I’m happy and a little excited to go on to new content.

P.S. Edit: Couldn’t let the lack of detail on back propagation go and went over parts of 3blue1brown on that and realized how amazing that series of videos on neural networks was. I feel like the clarity and detail spoiled me as I keep looking back on it every time I see new stuff. I appreciate and understand it all the more now. Make sure you check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk&list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi

April 24 ~ Day 2: Incomplete

Progress Summary: N/A

Learnings: N/A

Personal Notes: My HD appeared to fail which completely threw my day into disarray. After examining the internal connections it did come back but I don’t really think that’s what it was but still have no clue for certain. Regardless, I did nothing on my project but now that I know that is a risk I am more aware of how to adapt should it occur.

April 23 ~ Day 1: Complete

Progress Summary: Continued lessons in course which basically covered the introductory knowledge I already knew about the general features of an Artificial Neural Network.

Learnings: Covered activation functions that were common such as the Threshold function, sigmoid, rectifier, and hyperbolic Tangent function.

Personal Notes: Today was really hard for me to focus on anything so I tried to not be too hard on myself as I still did half the time I set out. Not what I want but still happy with it.

April 20/21/22 ~ Day -2/-1/0: Incomplete

Progress Summary: N/A

Learnings: N/A

Personal Notes: These days I took off as I had pushed myself way too far overall and needed to recover.

April 19 ~ Day -3: Complete

Progress Summary: Made it through two more video, an overview of the section topics and one specifically targeting the neuron and the corresponding connection/base concept of a basic neural network. Pretty good review for me and well laid out. Since I remember all of this pretty well I was able to keep watching at 2x as per normal but I did pause now and then to make notes.

Learnings: It was nice seeing the formula and application of the activation function in the way it was presented in the content today. Also, the clarification of single observations across inputs and outputs allowed me to clarify the connection of weight verses input values to the node as it relates to the training process as a whole. I’m realizing now how hard it’s going to be to relate the concepts I learn here concisely but I’ll try to do better as I go. Basically the same content can be learned from the youtube channel “Three blue, one brown” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk Check that out if you wish to cover the same concepts in a well explained format.

Personal Notes: Even though it wasn’t a full hour I’m calling this a full victory. Sleep was completely disrupted from event beyond my control but I still had an amazingly productive and balanced (respecting mid day exhaustion) day. Even after coming out of my late day second wind I was more than happy to let it go but push myself that little bit at the very end to do at least a little more. Definitely need to work on setting aside a specific earlier time for this or else it will keep slipping late into my schedule. I think 3:30 might tie well into exercise afterward might be nice. Right after I come from morning gardening would probably be best but might be a tad unrealistic. Right after dinner seems the most realistic but also the highest chance of failure and conflict. I’ll have to play around with this but for me I think mid afternoon bound to a quick exercise set might work the best.

April 19 ~ Day -4: Complete

Progress Summary: Covered first two “sections” of course but effectively that was just one small introduction and setup of environments. Course creator has terrible setup to make things look huge which are completely unnecessary. The redirects and constant bombardment to their own site for course “resources” for a purchased product drove me up the wall but looks like I’m past that now so should just be content from here on, hopefully.

Note: You don’t need to download anaconda and python/spyder to do the course as the resources also offer solution using google “Colab” to run things instead. You only realize that after installing it so fair warning. Nothing wrong with first route but know your options beforehand. Overall, progress was solid for tonight. Stayed focused and worked past technical problems smoothly. Solid start.

Learnings: Nothing new beyond a few history points and the fact that DNA storage is apparently something that can be done now. I also learned of a few new tools such as google Colab for running python/ML operations in browser.

Personal Notes: Got things balanced enough to start working it into my day and get a start of this project. Did late in the day which won’t work long term but was ok for today. Might be a little spotty but will do my best to get it worked out before formal start day.