[dlevine]

I did the Reinforcement learning specialization on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/reinforcement-learn...), which used this book. The specialization was great, but I would say that I had a lot of trouble following this book. I would find that there was a concept I didn't quite get, and then other things would build on top of that concept. I ended up feeling like I didn't quite grasp everything, even though I read most of the chapters more than once.

I do feel like there are a lot of things that aren't fully explained in this book, and maybe it is expected that the reader has some prior knowledge that I didn't have. For example, they never really explain the basic notation for backup diagrams. They just show one and mention that they are a thing. The mathematical notation they use also isn't really explained - they just start showing formulas of increasing complexity. It's possible to look these things up elsewhere, but they probably could have spent just a little bit more time explaining some of the basics and made it easier to follow.

[cg30e]

What made the specialization great? Did they explain things well where the book didn’t? Are the courses self-contained? What are the prerequisites?

[dlevine]

The specialization did a good job of explaining all of the basic concepts of RL in a fairly understandable way. The instructors don't assume a huge amount of prior knowledge, and make it pretty accessible. They split reasonably between theory and applications. I would say that you need some background in math and ML.

The courses do build upon each other. You could do just the first course and get a good overview of RL without diving into the details, but I don't think you could start midway through the specialization.

I would also suggest looking at the Hugging Face Deep Reinforcement Learning course. That one is very different (focused more on application than diving deep into the theory), but it's taught by a non-academic and really tries to explain the concepts in a way that is approachable to most programmers.

[nivertech]

Does anyone have any feedback on this Udacity courses:

Deep Reinforcement Learning

Nanodegree Program

https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-reinforcement-learning-n...