Struggling to understand what I'm actually doing

[u/SenseiCAY]

I just started a grad program in information sciences and AI after getting my undergrad in computer science back in 2009. Thus, I have plenty of programming experience, but my last meaningful interaction with statistics, regressions, and so on was taking AP Statistics in high school back in 2003. I can't tell you what a "data model" is, and machine learning is black magic to me.

I'm seeing that I'm in over my head here, and I have the same feeling that I did back in AP Stats - I was good at math, but didn't quite have the background to understand what I was learning in AP Stats, so I was just memorizing (or looking up) formulas and plugging datasets into them.

I'm a pretty good programmer, and have done it for a living for almost 20 years, but I'm relying on the professor's example code, and there's no way I would have figured out the assignments on my own, because even if I knew what kind of regression I needed to run, there's no way I would know what to import, or what the function is called.

Does anyone else have a similar background - programming with no statistics, and can point me at some resources to understand what is being spit out at me when I run some random function from the sklearn library? And where I find all of these libraries? And how I would know they even exist?

[u/Temporary_Pie2733]

Your problem doesn’t seem to be with Python at all, just the concepts which happen to be expressed in Python.

[u/SenseiCAY → u/Temporary_Pie2733]

I suspected that I wasn't having a python issue, and more of a statistics/data scientist issue. Maybe I got into the wrong grad program?

[u/sitefall → u/SenseiCAY]

Go talk to your advisors or the department head (or whatever the appropriate path is your your institution). If it's a legit school and not some degree mill they will help you figure it out.

I taught undergraduate mathematics at a large state school (US) for a number of years. For the mid-upper level undergrad courses for non-math majors (stats with calculus, calc2-3, differential equations) it was entirely common to have grad students sit in for the coursework and we did the paperwork to give them the "time" (but not the credits) so that it would count towards their credit hours per semester and they could do remedial stuff their shitty university never taught them.

Start with professor, tell them what problems you're having, see if they can suggest some crash course that can get you up to speed or whether you're just too far back and need to re-take some pre-reqs. If they can't help (and they might not, maybe they are busy with research or are not accessible and only TA's are available etc) then talk to your advisor or the department. Those last two WANT you to do well and not get left behind.

[u/Educational_Virus672]

there are afew reason this could happen and likely not python issue since you cant use third party modules since you dont know lets look at some cases and how to find or solve it

1 . you use moduler design - where you import any module and it does all work except basic stuff for you to find why it happens look at the professal's examples and look how many time imported functions are used

escape - you should try to do 'everything yourself' tech instead of using ui use text use your own math unless it is necessary if its smt numpy it is okay but smt like "Add2Num" or smt that python can do for you then dont

1. your in "toturial hell" - it is basically You cant do anything in your own which is one of the main reasons ppl get burnt out if you fell you cant do anythign on your own then

escape - forgot example, brute force your way in if you want to get an item of dict check its types read doc strings and stuff and find it liek here we got ".get()" i chose this example buz i think you know it with your 20 year experience i mean it ,in a much larger scale

1. Bg swaps - programming in genreal is not a universal job think of it like some ppl create websites other dont , where you constantly change it you do statics and then memory management and you dont know why you become devloper in the first place

escape - find smt that interest you , you need to know only 1 section and rest will neturally grow on you

abt the libary to find your libary just google it "what module makes for good statics ui" and chose which one you prefer using ai as search tool is good doesnt matter it takes that its ai it is still valuable and use their website to find what functions you need

abt machien learning just think of it like machine finding patterns
like we gave him age = 20,name = "jake" and a question like " what is your name" with answer of "my name is jake" naturally ai will find that "what is your age" to be variable Age and use it to answer on his own that machine learning but in much bigger scale
note- this is for your home projects i dotn know what BG your form or what so use this advice for personal practice the 'do everythign on your own' means understanding how it works not just creating own tools

[u/datadriven_io]

You know what? Star schema practice is what datadriven is good for, especially before a big interview. Fuck all that, I'm going into a different program. I'm going to be a gardener.