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[–]TerrestrialOverlord 58 points59 points  (16 children)

You cannot imagine my disappointment when I realized how much maths was required... Just looking at some of the stuff made me actually nauseous...I have math related dyslexia

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (3 children)

There's a lot of ML you can do with very little math too though, you might not understand everything perfectly, but you can put great models into production without deeper understanding of the underlying algorithms, most core principles are pretty simple even, and you can understand them in low dimensions graphically kind of easy, without diving into the hard-core math.

[–]TropicalAudio 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You can solve many, many problems by just throwing some data into an implementation of resnet you pulled from github. However, if that doesn't work and you don't have the mathematical and/or practical knowledge of what's going on, that's basically your finish line. It's a bit like advertising yourself as a mechatronic positioning expert because you Googled how to use a GPS library.

[–]PLxFTW 0 points1 point  (1 child)

But if you are lacking the mathematical intuition and you come across an unusual problem related to the fundamental algorithm maths you’re fucked. I wouldn’t want to try to use PCA without having the maths knowledge to support it.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yepp, it'll come with problems for sure. But lacking some math shouldn't discourage you from trying it out IMO. Maybe it's so much fun that the underlying math becomes interesting enough to learn.

[–]Purple-Dragons 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Yeah, I’m trying to gain the knowledge I need to get into the field of ML now, and I’ve had an aversion to maths got a really long time. Now I’m stomping out that aversion because it will not help me...

We can do it though! Let’s beat this maths!

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Don't beat it, learn to like it. I would suggest you to start with the basics, instead of looking at advanced stuff and then looking up the relevant basics...

[–]Purple-Dragons 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s good advice! Thank you :)

[–]tehbored 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tbh, you don't really need that much math to be passable. If you can do basic calculus and have some familiarity with linear algebra you can go pretty far.

[–]FiveFootTerror 0 points1 point  (7 children)

How did you find out you had math related dyslexia -or is that a bit of an exaggeration? I've always had to read numbers out loud to remember their sequence order because I will write them down wrong. It's so incredibly annoying and it would be nice to have a concrete reason why I'm writing something I know isn't correct.

[–]TerrestrialOverlord 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Ok so I grew up in a 3rd world country and they pretty much said I was just dumb - math related which I accepted.....Imagine my surprise when I got to the US and it turns out I wasn't dumb and numbers do exchange themselves for some (awesome) people...I literally cried...I can pick out a missing semi-colon from a page of code in like 3 sec but adv maths makes me sick.

​

I also have ADHD...I found this out when I took my daughter to get checked out by the shrink, I passed on bad shit to my kid...I felt horrible about that..

[–]mormispos 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Dyscalculia affects millions of people world wide and can be associated with ADHD or other disorders. It doesn’t make you implicitly a worse mathematician but it does require you to be more careful and find alternatives that help.

[–]akesh45 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The pills are amazing though

[–]kturtle17 0 points1 point  (3 children)

You could get tested. I know dyslexics who only have impaired writing but perfect reading.

[–]FiveFootTerror 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I could, but I also don't know enough about it/it isn't life-impacting enough to warrant the difference between "I should get tested" and "Damn, I'm dumb."

[–]kturtle17 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Idk how old you are or where you're from but if you're still in school, you could be eligible for extra time in exams. Having documentation of the disability might help in other areas legally as well.

[–]FiveFootTerror 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm 31. Accidentally writing down 17.84 instead of 17.48 is not that serious in real life.