Don't panic. The page is titled "Essential...", but unless you're beginning a new AAA engine by yourself, much of this laundry list is more like "Interesting"
Yep. Things like using dictionary learning for skinning models is overkill. Not to mention its not practical for realtime applications like games. Might be useful for animators though or devs writing animating tools.
Indeed. All this is hardly essential.
but knowing it makes you a more versatile developer.