"Practically" Building an Image Classifier

Most practitioners first learn deep learning through the lens of image classification. If you've taken a programming course, then consider this to be the equivalent of the "hello world" exercise they give you at the start. While many experts say image classification is solved (and there may be some truth in that), there's a lot of nuance and craft you can learn from this type of problem. With that being said, over the next couple of editions, I'll share how I build, evaluate and analyze these models through the form of a story. Initially, I considered consolidating everything into a single article.