Week 0: ML Fundamentals
Introduction to Machine Learning
Overview
Week 0 is a bit different from the rest of the program: it's self-paced and optional, completed on your own. No other weeks will require time outside the 2-hour weekly session. The purpose is to ensure that all participants share a basic foundation in key machine learning concepts that we'll build on throughout the reading group.
Most participants will be able to skip this week. Since the program has no formal prerequisites, we're providing resources so we don't need to spend later sessions covering ML fundamentals. The goal of the reading group is conceptual understanding rather than hands-on expertise, but some technical context can be helpful for developing that understanding.
Learning Objectives
By the end of Week 0, you should be able to:
- Explain, at a high level, how neural networks are trained
- Describe the basic architecture of a transformer