This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.rstudio.com/blog/getting-started-with-deep-learning-in-r
There are good reasons to get into deep learning: Deep learning has been outperforming the respective “classical” techniques in areas like image recognition and natural language processing for a while now, and it has the potential to bring interesting insights even to the analysis of tabular data. For many R users interested in deep learning, the hurdle is not so much the mathematical prerequisites (as many have a background in statistics or empirical sciences), but rather how to get started in an efficient way.