Critical Mass Skills Exchange

AHA, you got skills! But not all the people have all the skills! Here is a way of making us have all the skills (that we want to have).

1. If you have a skill or class you want to either teach or learn/take, and it is not on this page, put it on this page. The more detail you include, the more likely people are to teach you / learn from you. If you are interested in teaching something paid, you should first clear it with the Powers That Be.
2. Make sure to include your name or some other way we can know who you are and can reach you.
3. If you are on the teaching side, add a field that says "Critical mass: [x]" where x is the number of people who need to be involved for this to be a worthwhile endeavor. For example, you might not want to teach the class unless there's at least 5 people there.
4. If you plus whoever else is on the list for this class / skill equals critical mass, it is your responsibility to coordinate with the person teaching the skill/class and the Powers That Be to make this happen (this will likely involve a doodle poll to check availability and emailing Josh to make sure it's ok with him -- super simple!)

The Skills / classes

Super-basic practical machine learning (example)

• Stuff you will learn: what is machine learning? What does it do? What can it do for you? What types are there? How can you integrate it into your project? What are some common pitfalls you should avoid?
• Stuff you will not learn: how fancy machine learning algorithms work under the hood, how to do matrix calculus, how to program.
• A bit more: machine learning is the name for a class of algorithms that learn patterns or relationships in data. It is used in data mining, statistics, robotics, engineering and design, and much more. This is intended to be a very condensed version of the first 3-4 weeks of an undergrad machine learning course minus some of the math and plus some more advanced methods (that are conveniently implemented and available for use). If you've had any machine learning at all, you will probably be beyond anything I will teach (but are welcome to sit in anyway!).
• Critical Mass: 5. Sorry guys, I'd love to teach this with fewer people, but it will require prep on my part so I want to make sure there's decent interest.
• Duration: Probably a few sessions, maybe 8-10 hours in total.
• Cost: there might be a 'suggested donation' to AHA for letting us put this on.