Machine Learning - Advice & Journey so far..

A lot has been already written about ML & Data science by experts and a plenty of documents , post , blogs..can be found "how to learn & apply machine learning". After learning & completion of program "Machine Learning -Andrew NG (standford university)" through coursera platform, I felt compelled to write a post on ML.

Well this is just a beginning still there is a lot much... more to learn

Machine Learning -Andrew NG (standford university)-I would specially recommend beginners should go through this course . It would really help to understand "what, why & how" it is applied. About "Where" I think now it can be applied every field but keep in mind I am not expert just a beginner. This course include all relevant ML topics and strongly recommended by every experts.

Brush up Maths & stats -Especially amazing how maths, statistics are playing a vital role in ML & predictions. I learned algebra, Calculus during my higher/upper secondary school but truly get to know now "how it is applied & play a significant role in ML". I would say brush up only the needed topics of Maths algebra, calculus , Statistics & Matrices which is needed for ML(Go through khan academy, Matlab and there are plenty other sites available just google it) ... it would really help to understand much more better.

Play with own data sets -To get confidence, use or create your own data sets (Image learning - Processing, Recommender system - Movie ). For a beginner, initially it would be difficult to apply ML on own data sets but it will help to learn more and open the horizons.... for example. If i use my own image data set which has high pixels - Is it really helpful to reduce features or should I apply PCA etc...

Register on Kaggle - Check what experts are doing and how they are solving problems. It require skill set on R or Python so I would recommend to learn Python & its libraries slowly side by side.....Play on small kaggle data sets in which you feel confident. I tried to play with Health (Cancer- Liver), Weather (Wind direction)

Time & dedication -At last definitely it requires "time and dedication to learn something". Sometimes even I lost confidence seeing experts producing output & flushing knowledge on Kaggle platform in R and Python. I keep on recalling myself there is no key to short success and it require time , dedication and confidence to achieve something.

Focus and Plan- Plan on "How and what to learn". Dedicate 1 -2 hours daily on ML. I know its really very difficult to find the time but don't kill the momentum and plan wisely (use more time on weekends)

My Next Goal/Plan- As I said earlier still more needed to learn .To get some confidence I have plans to learn more into Deep learning, Apply Data science & ML (Python) & to contribute on Kaggle forum. I hope i would not loose my focus ...

Any Comments ,suggestion or recommendations are welcome to learn more ...