Udacity’s Machine Learning Nano-degree (MLND)
I’ve graduated the Udacity’s Machine Learning Nano-degree course!
Udacity is known as one of the best MOOC.
It takes about half year from June to December 2017. This is the link to the course I graduated.
Why I studied at Udacity after I completed the Coursera’s machine learning course
I started to study Udacity after I completed the Coursera’s Machine Learening course (article). Why did I start to study at another MOOC?
I realized that the Machine Learning course in Coursera targets the basic theory and algorythms. So when it comes to build the new model, I got some questions like “Ok then, how?”, “Should I start to study TensorFlow?”.
Then, I found Udacity’s MLND course teaches more practic way using Python framework. I thought I can graduate it easily because I completed the Coursera’s course already. Though this Udacity’s MLND course takes 1 year as standard, I thought I could finish within 3 months, but actually I couldn’t and it took me 6 months.
Ok I’m going to describe how different between Udacity and Coursera.
Udacity is more practical
I think Udacity’s MLND focuses on how to build the model using existing frameworks and how to optimize it rather than building the model from the scratch.
I built the algorythms from the scratch based on mathmatical methods by using GNU Octave, you can solve your assignment using Python, scikit-learn, Keras / TensorFlow.
More interesting projects
I completed the assignments in these projects.
- Predicting Boston housing prices
- Finding Donors: Predicting individual’s income
- Customer Segments: (Unsupervised Learning)
- Smartcab: Optimized Q-learning driving agent (Q-learning)
- Dog Project: Identify the dog breed by image (CNN)
- Own Project: Predicting the stock price (LSTM)
Those projects are so interesting and challenging works.
About Assignments
For Coursera, I could pass the assignments only submitting the codes, but it is needed to submit the report for Udacity.
I needed to write down the descriptions with my words, and it requried why I did it so, why I think this is the best etc.
After submitting it, the reviewer will add more questions on it, and it was tough but it made my understanding deeper.
Which I recommend? Coursera or Udacity?
To be honest, I can not recommend just one of them. It is very important to understand the basic foundamental theories, and the pracitcal training is also important.
It is like Udacity bridges the gap between the basic and the practical work. So… I recommend both of them.
From a perspective of the cost, Udacity costs much more (199USD/month). It is free to join to the Coursera, it just requires the fee for acquiring the certification. (still so cheap and I recommend to get the certification)
Anyway, I’m filled with a sense of accomplishment that I could graduate! I really recommend these 2 programs, please challenge them! :)