<p>I have voted to close the question as duplicate, because it seems to me that both say:</p>

<p><em>I have a hard time to understand ML. Can you point me to a gentle introduction</em> (where one OP names the gaps and one does not).</p>

<p>We already have a couple of introductory reference questions on our site and I am a little bit tired of seeing new ones popping up again and again ... meanwhile many users seem to be eager to answer those questions instead of closing them as duplicate. Everyone has a different background, but does it really make sense to allow one question per profession / degree of knowlege ?</p>

<p><strong>BUT:</strong>
If the focus on the question is explicitly <em>"Is a strong background in maths a total requisite for ML?"</em> (so this is also the title of the question) and we downvote answers which only provide references to introductory material to Machine Learning (because this answers belongs to the current duplicate) and upvote those who provide insights to the question and/or introductory material to "learn math the right way"-material, I am totally fine reopening it.</p>

<p>I admit that I was too trigger happy (when using the close-cannon). Thanks for raising this !</p>
