I took the 11-week Coursera course last year (and even paid for the 'verified' certificate). It was worth it, I think. I may not have a deep understanding of the different ML algorithms that were presented, but at least I know of their existence, and to what problems they are suited (and then I can look up the details when needed).<p>Granted, that's not enough to actually find work doing anything ML-related, as there are now plenty of experts with years of experience out there on the job market, but hey, I like learning stuff for the sake of it. I'm thinking of taking one of the follow-up courses on NN.
I have tried to get into Machine Learning/Deep Learning a few times, but I found it difficult to get motivated because I feel like I don't have any immediate use cases in my own personal or professional life to which I can apply them.<p>Even areas in which my company can potentially benefit from Machine Learning, we don't have access to vast troves of data to use as training sets. So our brainstorming sessions have gone nowhere.
Ended up founding a ml startup predicting crypto currency prices <a href="https://bitbank.nz" rel="nofollow">https://bitbank.nz</a> after finishing this course! such a good skillset to have I didn't know what I would do when I started the course just that I should learn this ml stuff