[Event Review] How to Learn Machine Learning? — By Le Wagon Tokyo

Event Details
Name of the event: How to learn Machine Learning? — ApéroTalk with Gilles Daquin
Organizer: Le Wagon Tokyo
Guest: Gilles Daquin
Venue: Impact HUB Tokyo
Date: 2017/07/06
Time: 7:00 pm — 9:30 pm
# of Participants : about 50 people
About the organizer
Le Wagon Tokyo is a coding school for startups, creative people and tech entrepreneurs. Our 9-week Full-Stack Coding Bootcamp is designed for complete beginners or “half-beginners” who really want to dive into programming and, above all, change their mindset. Learn to think like a developer, consider issues with new insight, and become more autonomous thanks to these newly acquired abilities.
About the Guest
Gilles Daquin is a Machine Learning and Data Analytics professional working at Nissan Renault, who’s been spending a full year navigating his way through Machine Learning, from the very basics to usable applications.

What to Retain About this Event?
What is Machine Learning
“Machine Learning is a method of Data Analysis that automates Analytical Model Building. Using algorithms that literately learn from data, Machine Learning allows computers to find hidden insights without being explicitly programmed where to look.” (Source SAS)
Concrete usage of Machine Learning
When he was working for a software company, he studied the data from their customers, and discovered that their customers were divided in 5 different groups, using their software quite differently. Hence, they were able to provide a customized experience depending on the group to make the software more personalized depending on the usage.
Why learning Machine Learning today
- The right timing
- Self-learning is within reach
- Excellent Machine Learning online courses (i.e Coursera Machine Learning course by Standford Professor Andrew Ng)
- Open source widely used
- Strong community
What to focus on
- Exploratory Data Analysis
- Python and R
- Scikit Learn library
- Communities (Kaggle, Stack Overflow)
Recommendations
- Don’t be discourage by the feedback from the community
- Avoid the learning trap (and get your hands dirty by trying to solve challenges)
- While it’s important to understand the whole Machine Learning process, learn one specific technique in depth
- Build a show case project
- Join a community
Situation of Machine Learning in Japan
There aren’t many Data Scientists in Japan, and only a few people really know what Machine Learning is. Machine Learning is often referred as AI. So, there are plenty of opportunities in Japan for Data Scientists!

Final Words
You can check the Le Wagon Tokyo Meetup page for upcoming events (which are free of participation). Le Wagon Tokyo events cover a wide range of topics around new technologies attracting a large panel of participants (both foreigners and Japanese). The guests of those events are coming from well-known companies such as Salesfoce.com, Github, Stripe, but also from SMBs and startups. The fact that many guests are foreigners having worked or started their companies in Japan also allows us to get a different point of view on the industry. It’s important to mention that all their events are hosted in English.
At FIXER, we’re always looking for talented engineers to grow our team. If you are interested to work in Japan with cutting-edge technologies (Cloud platform, Machine Learning, AI, Blockchain, Fintech), feel free to contact me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
