Learn to Use It First, Then Understand Why
In founding fast.ai Howard held to an idea utterly different from traditional pedagogy — not requiring learners first to systematically finish math foundation courses such as linear algebra and calculus, but letting learners from the first lesson directly train a real usable deep-learning model, then gradually revealing the mathematical principles behind it as the course advanced, this "practice first" teaching idea proven to greatly lower the learning threshold of the deep-learning field and draw a great body of learners who had originally shrunk from the field for want of a mathematical background.