[Noisebridge-discuss] ML Wednesday: code up a neuron!

[David Stainton]

Hey,

This programmer/audience idea sounds really fun!
I imagine making incremental changes to my source tree with each ML class....

hmm the ruby code kind of looks like python...

def dot_product(a, b):
    sum = 0
    i = 0
    while i < len(a):
        sum += a[i] * b[i]
        i += 1
    return sum


On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Josh Myer <josh at joshisanerd.com> wrote:
> Hey, an early announcement, crazy!
>
> Tomorrow night, 8PM, at 83c, we'll have a machine learning workshop.
> This week's ML Wednesday is going to be another experiment in format.
> We'll have a real quick introduction to perceptrons (cute little
> baaaaby neural networks), then we'll all code one up in our language
> of choice.  By the time you leave, you should have written your own
> little artificial neuron.
>
>
> To that end, I need a couple of things from the audience:
>
> 1. My ML-aware peeps to step up to shepherd a bit on Wednesday night
>   (You've all been awesome about this thus far, so I'm not worried
>   about it.  You might want to brush up on the learning  algorithm
>   used, though.  I'll do a preso, too, so it should be smooth going.)
>
> 2. Some sample code in your language of choice.  As long as you can
>   write a the following function, we're probably good.  Here's that
>   function; please have it working before you come Wednesday.
>
>
> dot_product:
>
> takes two arrays of equal length, multiples them along each other, and
> sums the products.
>
> Test cases for dot_product:
>
> dot_product([0],[1]) = 0
> dot_product([1,2,3,4],[1,10,100,1000]) = 4321
>
> And, a quick version in accessible ruby:
>
> def dot_product(a, b)
>  sum = 0.0
>  i = 0
>
>  while(i < a.length)
>    sum += a[i]*b[i]
>    i += 1
>  end
>
>  return sum
> end
>
>
> If this experimental format goes well, we could move on to doing more
> complex neural networks on top of the same ideas in another workshop,
> or maybe try some other learning algorithms in the same format.
>
> I hope you can join us and build your own little learner tomorrow!
> --
> Josh Myer   650.248.3796
>  josh at joshisanerd.com