I'm in the same boat. For long time, I was interested in AI but at the same time intimidated by math. I'm relatively comfortable with discrete mathematics and classical algorithms and at the same time calculus and linear algebra is completely foreign to me. Also, I do not accept way to learn ML without good understanding of core principles behind it. So math is a must.
A few months ago, I stumbled upon very amazing YouTube Channel 3Blue1Brown which explains math in very accessible way and at the same time I got feeling that I finally started understanding core ideas behind linear algebra and calculus.
Just recently he published 4 videos about deep neural networks:
Even if you think you grok matrices, have a go at the first few videos of that playlist, if just for the visualization. It really helped me see what matrices (and operations on matrices) represent!
3Blue1Brown is a treasure. The production value is excellent, and he's great at taking seemingly uninteresting ideas and painting a beautiful picture to connect them in twenty minutes. I used to go through a video before falling asleep each night.
Having watched the third one out of sequence, seeing the first two and then watching the third again helped me get a good understanding of the fundamentals. 3blue1brown as a narrator does a excellent job of allowing a rather tricky subject be more approachable, and inspired me to buy a course to allow a deeper dive into the math behind ML+NNs.
Nice to some one pointing the fundamentals. A good understanding about probabilist models is good too. After getting into too the basic math knowledge, I suggest this: https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud730
Classification and regression. Given examples, predict labels or values for new data. SVM used to be more «hot» than neural nets and are still very useful.
A few months ago, I stumbled upon very amazing YouTube Channel 3Blue1Brown which explains math in very accessible way and at the same time I got feeling that I finally started understanding core ideas behind linear algebra and calculus.
Just recently he published 4 videos about deep neural networks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilg3gGewQ5U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIeHLnjs5U8
So my fear of ML was gone away and I'm very excited to explore whole new world for neural networks and other things like support vector machines etc