1. How much power would we need? I'd assume a Thinkpad X230 won't do. If we need a moderately powerful system, do you provide AWS (or equivalent)?

2. I watch Siraj's videos. Although they are fun and useful, they are very short and resemble a recipe in a cookbook (no offense intended). Is the course going to be the same as videos? Or is it going to be discussing all the necessary mathematics/statistics?

3. I couldn't find detailed information about the instructors' background. Are they able answer questions from the deep learning book or Sutton&Barto, if one were to read them alongside the course?

Hi @aalireza,

1. We'll provide instructions to use AWS (65 cents an hour) and are working with AWS to get students credits. We've done this in the past so there's a decent chance we get this but no guarantees yet.

2. The course is going to be Siraj's videos supplemented with additional content to go deeper into the math/statistics and to actually do problem sets and projects. So Siraj is meant to be the starting point from where we go deeper.

3. Mat Leonard will be the main instructor and did is PhD in Physics and Statistical Neuroscience at Berkeley. He's done his fair share of reading from books in the field and will be able to answer your technical questions.

Hi @dhruv,

So we require AWS for sure to complete this course right? Can you suggest the system configuration needed for this course?

There seems to be a pretty wide spectrum of abstraction for DL tools, from writing by hand to Theano to Keras, for example. Will this course focus on any tool in particular?

Hey @wcbeard10,

This course will focus primarily on TensorFlow. We're doing so because, at the moment, it's the most popular Deep Learning framework and provides you enough flexibility to explore some of the newer network architectures we focus on towards the end of the program.

~80% focusses on TensorFlow, but we are working on Keras content in other Nanodegrees!

Nice to see you here on HN, Oliver :)

In the same spirit: my name is Oliver and I lead the Udacity open source self-driving car project! AMA, or email me at [email protected]. I love all things AVs and deep learning!

This is the only thing that makes me said: "At this time we are not awarding scholarships for this program."

Is it mandatory that I have to finish the course with 17 weeks or whatever the time duration is? Let's say if it takes me year to finish the course is this acceptable? I am interested to learn Deep learning and gain knowledge to concepts and new materials which Udacity is providing. I'm going to be most likely a passive learner not in a pursuit of degree.

Also will there is new materials added periodically or is this for a short duration of time frame?

Hi Akshay,

You have 6 months in total to finish all the content. Siraj is also posting some segment of the content for free on YouTube for everyone to see. The new material is added weekly!

What does "Live session" mean? I can't find anywhere on Udacity where this is described. It seems like it is a selling point of the program, but why it is a selling point, seems unclear on the on boarding page.

Hi @wodenokoto - sorry for the lack of clarity. The Live Sessions will be a live Youtube stream held by Siraj where he answers your questions as you ask them in the session.

Hi Dhruv, thanks for being available to answer some questions. Do you think that someone from a design background with some JS experience is able to do this course?

Will any of the official content (eg. lectures) for the nanodegree be offered free to those not enrolled?

Would you say that this program is subset of material covered in car nano-degree program?

Hi @halite,

I'd say that covers a larger breadth of Deep Learning than the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree program. For instance, this program will cover Recurrent Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Autoencoding, and other Deep Learning applications not covered in the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree. In the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree, we primarily focus on Deep Learning applications in Computer Vision. Here we'll cover applications in speech, computer vision, game-playing and other areas.

Thanks this is useful info. I'm currently selected in that program and was wondering how's this different from that. I'm probably going to do the self-driving program this year.

This is all new material!

hi! For some of us who have never taken a udacity course can you maybe give a bit of background information about what the weekly time expectations are? And also maybe a quick outline of the format for interaction? (or a link?)

Hey @dnautics! The main deadlines are around 5 projects that you will do over the course of the 17 weeks. We have suggested deadlines for them but the only requirement is to pass all of them within the 6 month date of the program. There will be other weekly assignments but those are meant for you to go at your own pace. We've designed this so that those who have a full time job and family can stay on track while making progress.

how much time is one expected to spend on this course each week?

Hey @qrco, you'll be expected to spend 4 hours a week.