1.

Python/C++/R/Java: If you want a job in Machine

Learning, you will probably have to learn all these languages at
some point. C++ can help in speeding code up. R works great in
statistics and plots, and Hadoop is Java-based, so you probably
need to implement mappers and reducers in Java.

2. Probability and Statistics: Theories help in learning

about algorithms. Great samples are Naive Bayes, Gaussian
Mixture Models, and Hidden Markov Models. You need to have
a firm understanding of Probability and Stats to understand
these models. Go nuts and study measure theory. Use statistics
as a model evaluation metric: confusion matrices, receiver-
operator curves, p-values, etc.

3. Applied Math and Algorithms: Having a firm

understanding of algorithm theory and knowing how the
algorithm works, you can also discriminate models such as
SVMs. You will need to understand subjects such as gradient
decent, convex optimization, lagrange, quadratic programming,
partial differential equations and alike. Also, get used to looking
at summations.

4. Distributed Computing: Most of the time, machine

learning jobs entail working with large data sets these days. You
cannot process this data using single machine, you need to
distribute it across an entire cluster. Projects such as Apache
Hadoop and cloud services like Amazon’s EC2 makes it easier
and cost-effective.

5. Expanding the Expertise in Unix Tools: You should

also master all of the great unix tools that were designed for
this: cat, grep, find, awk, sed, sort, cut, tr, and more. Since all of
the processing will most likely be on linux-based machine, you
need access to these tools. Learn their functions and utilize
them well. They certainly have made my life a lot easier.

6. Learning more about Advanced Signal Processing

techniques: Feature extraction is one of the most important
parts of machine-learning. Different types of problems need
various solutions, you may be able to utilize really cool advance
signal processing algorithms such as: wavelets, shearlets,
curvelets, contourlets, bandlets. Learn about time-frequency
analysis, and try to apply it to your problems. If you have not
read about Fourier Analysis and Convolution, you will need to
learn about this stuff too. The ladder is signal processing 101
stuff though.

7. Other skills: (a) Update oneself: You must stay up to date

with any up and coming changes. It also means being aware of
the news regarding the development to the tools (changelog,
conferences, etc.), theory and algorithms (research papers,
blogs, conference videos, etc.). Online community changes
quickly. Expect and cultivate this change. (b) Read a lot: Read
papers like Google Map-Reduce, Google File System, Google Big
Table, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data. There are great
free machine learning books online and you should read those
as well.

Happy Machine Learning!