Getting Started with PyTorch
Chapter 1: PyTorch Fundamentals and Setup
What is PyTorch?
Installation and Environment Configuration
Introduction to Tensors
Creating Tensors
Basic Tensor Operations
Relationship with NumPy
Hands-on Practical: Setup and Tensor Basics
Quiz for Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Advanced Tensor Manipulations
Tensor Indexing and Slicing
Reshaping and Rearranging Tensors
Joining and Splitting Tensors
Understanding Broadcasting
Tensor Data Types
CPU vs GPU Tensors
Practice: Tensor Manipulation Techniques
Quiz for Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Automatic Differentiation with Autograd
The Concept of Automatic Differentiation
PyTorch Computation Graphs
Tensors and Gradient Calculation (
requires_grad)Performing Backpropagation (
backward())Accessing Gradients (
.grad)Disabling Gradient Tracking
Gradient Accumulation
Hands-on Practical: Autograd Exploration
Quiz for Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Building Models with
torch.nnThe
torch.nn.Module Base ClassDefining Custom Network Architectures
Common Layers: Linear, Convolutional, Recurrent
Activation Functions (ReLU, Sigmoid, Tanh)
Sequential Containers for Simple Models
Loss Functions (
torch.nn losses)Optimizers (
torch.optim)Practice: Building a Simple Network
Quiz for Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Efficient Data Handling
The Need for Specialized Data Loaders
Working with
torch.utils.data.DatasetBuilt-in Datasets (e.g., TorchVision)
Data Transformations (
torchvision.transforms)Using
torch.utils.data.DataLoaderCustomizing DataLoader Behavior
Hands-on Practical: Creating a Data Pipeline
Quiz for Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Implementing the Training Loop
Anatomy of a Training Loop
Setting Up the Model, Loss, and Optimizer
Iterating Through Data with DataLoader
The Forward Pass: Getting Predictions
Calculating the Loss
Backpropagation: Computing Gradients
Updating Weights with the Optimizer
Zeroing Gradients
Implementing an Evaluation Loop
Saving and Loading Model Checkpoints
Hands-on Practical: Complete Training Routine
Quiz for Chapter 6
Chapter 7: Introduction to Common Architectures
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) Overview
Building a Simple CNN in PyTorch
Understanding Input/Output Shapes for CNN Layers
Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) Overview
Building a Simple RNN in PyTorch
Handling Sequential Data Input for RNNs
Brief Mention of LSTM and GRU
Practice: Implementing Basic CNN and RNN
Quiz for Chapter 7
Chapter 8: Monitoring and Debugging Models
Common Errors in PyTorch Development
Debugging Shape Mismatches
Checking Device Placement (CPU/GPU)
Inspecting Gradients for Issues (Vanishing/Exploding)
Visualizing Training Progress with TensorBoard
Logging Metrics during Training/Evaluation
Using Python Debugger (pdb) with PyTorch
Practice: Debugging and Visualization
Quiz for Chapter 8
Optimizers (torch.optim)
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- torch.optim - PyTorch 2.3 documentation, PyTorch Developers, 2025 (PyTorch Foundation) - Official PyTorch documentation for the torch.optim package, detailing available optimizers and their usage.
- Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization, Diederik P. Kingma and Jimmy Ba, 2015 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1412.6980 - The original research paper introducing the Adam optimization algorithm.
- Deep Learning, Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville, 2016 (MIT Press) - A comprehensive textbook covering the theoretical foundations of deep learning, including optimization algorithms.
- Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization, Ilya Loshchilov, Frank Hutter, 2019 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1711.05101 - Proposes a method for decoupling weight decay from the gradient update, leading to algorithms like AdamW.
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