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I am a CS major but I was always bad at math. Can you recommend your favorite resources for learning probability and statistics basics?



“Introduction to statistical learning” is probably the good goto resource to start with. There’s a decent open source book on probability which I use when I need more in-depth understanding, but I don’t remember the title right now.

One clarification: you don’t need an extreme understanding of stats, probability, linear algebra, imho. If you already took college level classes, you’re likely to be fine.


I was a CS major who made a 20 year career in software who was always told I was bad at math and struggled all through school with math. Somewhere about ten years into my career I began to realize that it wasn't really that I was bad with math, but that the way math is taught just doesn't work for most people. And, a lot of that math that you were expected to learn is really only directly applicable in very specific circumstances that you might not encounter in your career - which is not to say that the mental exercise of learning them weren't worthwhile!

So my point is, if it isn't making sense the way you are being taught, go explore other avenues. There's no way these machine learning algorithms would have made sense to me as a 20-something undergrad, but as a 40-something who can explore them via software rather than a whiteboard, they really aren't that complicated to get started.




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