# Review of Andrew Ng's Machine Learning Course and Next Steps

DevFeed: [Review of Andrew Ng's Machine Learning Course and Next Steps](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/review-of-andrew-ng-s-machine-learning-course-and-next-steps-24968.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://codeahoy.com/2017/01/19/online-course-review-the-best-machine-learning-course-for-beginners/>)

Author: umer

Published: 2017-01-19T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Code Ahoy - Articles](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/code-ahoy-articles.md>)

Topics: [Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence.md>), [Machine learning](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/machine-learning.md>), [Neural Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/neural-network.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [course](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/course.md>), [machine-learning](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/machine-learning.md>), [neural-networks](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/neural-networks.md>), [review](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/review.md>)

## AI overview

A personal review of Andrew Ng's Coursera machine learning course, motivated by the author's desire to understand practical applications of machine learning beyond the mathematics emphasized in earlier AI courses.

## Source excerpt

In college, I took a couple of introductory AI courses. They were almost entirely math. Artificial neural networks were matrices and equations on a whiteboard, and nobody ever showed us what you could build with them. I finished the assignments, graduated and moved on. A while ago, I started noticing articles and blogs on self-driving cars that use "machine learning". Was this something new, or just a new name for the decades-old field I studied in college? I couldn't tell. I had seen plenty of the math. What I had never seen was what it could actually do. One evening by chance, I came across a link to what sounded like a Mario video. Being a fan of retro video games, I opened it. The video shows a skilled player playing Super Mario World. Here's the twist: the skilled player isn't a human. It is a neural network program that taught itself how to play Super Mario World with zero help. When it started, it knew absolutely nothing about Super Mario World or Super Nintendo. It didn't even know that pressing the A key on the controller makes Mario jump over obstacles. It learned to play and complete the first level all by itself... made possible by machine learning. Needless to say, my mind was blown. I wish my professors had shown something similar at the beginning of the course. I would have been all over it. It was a fantastic demonstration of the power of machine learning. I spent the weekend reading blogs and news articles about machine learning applications. I tried to run some simple applications but didn't get far. I wanted to understand what problems it can solve. I wanted to apply it to a real-world problem. At some point, I decided that I need to take a course so I could read and understand machine learning blogs and research papers. I researched online found a course on Coursera offered by Andrew Ng. For those of you who don't know who Andrew is, he is a highly respected and very influential scientist in the fields of machine learning and AI. He has led machine