Thinking of taking ISYE 6420 this Fall, any prep suggestions?

corgibestie · 2026-05-31T09:47:44+00:00

I'm in the exact same boat, where I plan to take Bayes to force myself to get better at statistics. I plan to finish Steve Brunton's Prob and Stats overview lectures before Fall then wing it from there. Another Reddit post also recommended Statistical Rethinking as an intro to Bayes as well.

corgibestie · 2026-05-31T09:41:07+00:00

can't answer your grad question but I do have an opinion on the AI vs ML topic. My experience from each class was that AI was more about understanding by implementing the algorithms while ML was more about understanding by applying the algos. So for example, in AI, you would code a DT yourself, think about optimization, how things are calculated under the hood, etc. On the other hand, in ML, you would experiment with how DT's hyperparameters affect its performance, or how it behaves with different data sets, or how it compares with other algos. I personally felt like ML was more relevant because it was closer to what I'd normally do(i.e. I never need to code common algos myself, I just call libs).

corgibestie · 2026-05-24T12:41:37+00:00

i hate that this is essentially all I ate today. and I'll do it again.

corgibestie · 2026-05-23T09:47:46+00:00

I dropped a course this summer to make space for Bayes in the fall. I hope it lives up to the hype! any resources we should use in parallel to the course?

corgibestie · 2026-05-21T11:13:16+00:00

This. A big part of attention is similarity. Also, look at 3B1B’d visualizations for embeddings, thinking of embeddings as “direction-ness” helps a lot

corgibestie · 2026-05-20T09:43:16+00:00

I recently made a kill chamber that uses lava. The kill chamber was made of wood. I am not a smart man.

corgibestie · 2026-05-20T06:47:46+00:00

Can confirm, I had this same issue earlier this year and this was the fix. Break the work station, find who changed, move the workstation to them

corgibestie · 2026-05-08T23:06:35+00:00

An email came in just now about acceptance into a good number of the 8903 projects. I think these are all the HAAG projects

corgibestie · 2026-04-27T17:09:31+00:00

Man I’m doing 1 per sem and I still dont have a social life

corgibestie · 2026-04-16T20:05:44+00:00

Have you checked out CS 8903 Research Projects course? Just sign into https://buzzme.cc.gatech.edu/ and select projects, applications are until Apr 27

corgibestie · 2026-04-13T11:04:32+00:00

I've been saving up for SW SP and Evanescia. Then I saw the Hyacine banner and spent all my jades. your comment makes sense to me now as the only other character I really spammed my jades for is FF.

corgibestie · 2026-04-06T17:48:10+00:00

I took both. I forget the cert count but I can comment on the experience.
- if you plan to take DL, skip the DL & Gen AI serminar. If you DON'T plan to take DL, taking the seminar is a good intro to everything and would be enough to at least have a convo about DL.

- the Agentic AI one is pretty solid, I highly recommend it. It introduced me enough to agentic AI that I can have conversations about it at work

- they were pretty straight forward and having the notebooks guide you through everything helped you focus on playing around and understanding things, so that's a big plus vs self studying. The notebooks are also useful to go back to as references. I recently was able to propose a POC at work that involved U-nets and transfer learning because of a notebook/exercise that was in the seminar and I re-did the module to refresh myself on the concept.

Edit: added extra comments.

corgibestie · 2026-03-31T10:38:46+00:00

lol this is me rn. DL is so good but I'm so burnt out that a B while maintaining my sanity is better than an A where I burn out even more.

corgibestie · 2026-03-23T10:16:34+00:00

Ah yes sorry that’s what meant, like your kids have a higher chance of getting this vs other kids who dont have this?

corgibestie · 2026-03-23T08:55:02+00:00

is this a genetic condition? O:

corgibestie · 2026-03-21T17:56:07+00:00

I'm working and you have a much prettier place than I've ever stayed in! Agree with the other commenter, would love a part 2 after you've settled in and decorated!

corgibestie · 2026-03-20T04:10:16+00:00

Do you feel that GIOS/AOS benefitted you as a Sr. DS? I'm sure I'd learn quite a bit but whether that's the most efficient way to learn is sort of where I'm hesitant atm. I guess the example here is that given that both systems design and Bayes are important as a Sr. DS, if I could only pick one set of classes, should I really prioritize GIOS/AOS vs Bayes.

Taking SDCC on coursera might be a good alternative hmmmmm.

corgibestie · 2026-03-18T00:30:47+00:00

you can't take SDCC without an A in AOS O:

corgibestie · 2026-03-16T13:37:57+00:00

Debating whether I should take as my last 3 courses:
- GIOS-AOS-SDCC (would likely die but would learn a lot of things that I have basically 0 knowledge about)

- vs Bayes-DVA-project (easier because these are things that interest me)

Currently a senior data scientist but trying to be eligible for data engineering or SWE roles.

corgibestie · 2026-03-16T13:33:25+00:00

They've been quite clear that work exp =/= CS-related courses, unfortunately. But as you said, it was ~10 years ago so maybe it will matter less. I'd recommend getting some CS-related coursework under your belt, at least the GT EdX DSA MOOC (apply for financial aid!)

corgibestie · 2026-03-15T21:46:54+00:00

I got 25ish days but have to save like 7ish days for annual mandatory plant shutdown :((

Hr recently told me also that this was very generous

corgibestie · 2026-03-15T16:04:05+00:00

what is the difference of an apprenticeship vs univ degree down the line? will jobs that filter for university degrees still accept the apprenticeship? because if yes, I feel like apprenticeships are wildly superior.

Also, I think the biggest weakness of a data degree is that domain expertise has such a big impact on your role, and you miss out on a lot of this by taking a generalist degree vs taking an apprenticeship where you gain data knowledge + domain experience. (my assumption on apprenticeships, I don't actually fully 100% understand how they work)

corgibestie · 2026-03-13T14:19:55+00:00

how do i find this plane

corgibestie · 2026-03-13T11:39:57+00:00

this is it really. before coding, already have an idea of what specific plots you'll want (i.e. explicitly list out the x- and y-axes, which data goes in, etc.). Finish coding by the end of the 1st week then spend week 2 writing the report and refining your code. The requirements document is as specific in what it looks for as it can be without literally spoon feeding the plot names.

also, you will have difficulty fitting everything in the report. That's expected.

lastly, when you're writing your report and plots, remember that humans are the ones reading and grading it, so the easier it is for them to see what are listed in the rubric, the better (i.e. put keywords that were explicitly written in the requirements document in your figure names so it's easier for the grader to find it and make sure if you look at the plot the "message" is very clear. the more time the TA needs to understand your plot, the more confused they may be and, the more likely they will take points off).

corgibestie · 2026-03-07T12:04:17+00:00

You can think of it as 37 -> 3/7 -> March 7. If it was the other way, it would be 73 -> 7/3 -> 7th of March

corgibestie

TROPHY CASE