Intuitive Deep Learning Part 1a: Introduction to Neural Networks

Deep Learning is really just a subset of Machine Learning that has garnered significant attention recently due to its stellar performance across many tasks as we've listed above. That begs the question -- What is Machine Learning? And how is Machine Learning any different from "traditional algorithms"? If you've taken a class on algorithms, the standard metaphor for an algorithm is a recipe. An algorithm is a series of steps, that when performed in a specific order, produced your desired output. A "cooking algorithm" for a robot to make bread might go something like this: And so on… (I'm not a bread expert, so I shan't write a recipe for bread here) In Machine Learning, we don't specify the algorithm the way we did above.