Hey!
I’ve decided to shift the focus of these newsletters from teaching machine learning to sharing interesting concepts, personal insights, engaging articles, and more resources that I think will provide value. There will still be a lot of Machine Learning but there will also be a little more me.
This month I want to talk about the Sunk Cost Fallacy and how I think we can use it to your advantage.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: Investing in something makes people want to continue with that investment even when it no longer makes sense.
For example, if you purchase an expensive machine learning textbook and then realize it’s not very good, it does not make sense to continue going through it just because you invested money into it. It is a fallacy to continue reading it just because you invested money into it. You can replace “machine learning textbook” with courses, videos, jobs, or even machine learning itself! I think it takes a special kind of human to be interested in learning the inner-mechanisms of AI.
A caveat to applying Sunk Cost is that you don’t want to give up on things too early. You shouldn’t necessarily quit something just because it gets hard, or you see something new and shiny. There is a balance between “giving up” and making a smart decision to pursue something else. This concept is talked about in The Dip by Seth Godin.
So, beware your sunk costs. Don’t let them slow down your ML studying… or whatever else you do.
Announcements
I’ve started a discord server where we can all study AI together. Check it out! It would be fun to hang out in there together. (Here is the invite)
My New Content
- Website: Essential Machine Learning Topics List
- YouTube: I Did the Deep Learning Specialization: Should You?
- YouTube: My QUICK Overview of Derivatives for Machine Learning
- YouTube: BASICS of Linear Regression for Machine Learning
Other Useful/Interesting Resources
Michael Hammer
Read all my Newsletters here: https://michaelphammer.com/newsletter/
Feel free to respond to this email. I’d appreciate hearing from you. I’m open to feedback, thoughts, opinions, and everything else.