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Comment by anonytrary | Hacker News Reader

This is why you take linear algebra and calculus before doing machine learning.

On the contrary - ML is a great motivator to finally grapple the "prerequisites".

During school I never understood what the math was for, so my unconscious brain never saw the necessity to actually learn it. Now I want to learn - with hugely better results.

This mechanism should be utilized much more often instead of shoving seemingly unrelated knowledge into peoples ears without letting them feel the need for it first.

Right. There are a lot of comments along the lines of "Duhhh, that's the point of calculus" here. But you know what? Screw that. People learn when people learn, and discovering it for yourself is a lot cooler than someone telling you about it, especially if it's related to investigating something you care about.

I can't tell you the number of 'trivial' math facts that I have (re)discovered because they were in the context of something I cared deeply about.

The point isn't to remember D_x is a linear operator--math isn't about memorization. It's about understanding the context where this is a useful fact and knowing how to figure it out.

Learn it in Calc I and you can half-heartedly reference it (...isn't differentiation linear? I feel like I remember that from senior year of high school...).

Figure it out on your own and you own it for life.

Post it to the internet and you get ridiculed and mocked for it so that you wish you could forget it.

> The point isn't to remember D_x is a linear operator--math isn't about memorization. It's about understanding the context where this is a useful fact and knowing how to figure it out.

Totally agree with this part.

> Post it to the internet and you get ridiculed and mocked for it so that you wish you could forget it.

Telling everybody you meet about a basic fact that you just learned is mildly cute when a 6-year-old does it.

It's great that this person learned something that was new to them, sure. But that doesn't mean that they need to shout about it to the tens of thousands of their closest friends who read the front page of HN.

calculus fundamentals pretty often lead to extremal problems. Those seem quite useful for optimization at any rate.

> On the contrary - ML is a great motivator to finally grapple the "prerequisites".

Your comment doesn't make sense, considering that you acknowledge math is in fact a prior requirement. Just because you didn't made heads or tails out of math during school that doesn't mean math ceased to be a prerequisite to learn applied math.

Agreed. This is the approach taken by the generally brilliant '3Blue1Brown' YouTube channel.

His video on determinants (for example) teaches what they actually do, rather than emphasising a seemingly arbitrary algorithm for you to blindly follow (which is how I was taught determinants).

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hm, I feel like how that comment is read is in the eye of the beholder... it just depends on whether you see the glass half empty or half full. You could read it as a dismissal, or you could read it as an advice or a warning that could very well teach someone (like the OP) something... in this case, I suppose that might be something like: "Here's the important thing to really take away from this incident: it's worth taking the courses in the recommended manner so you can learn more insightful things like this with less effort."

I think it's great that machine learning is exciting enough that people want to learn the math behind it.

The dude/dudette figured it out on their own which is what math is actually about. Who cares if it's well known? Knowing a fact because you learned it in a class is cool and all but it's not the only way to acquire knowledge, and I would argue not even the best way---just the most efficient fact/hour ratio.

You are right. Sometimes the most sticking facts in my head are those that I rediscovered by myself, because that helped me to see their actual importance, which might have not been that apparent while hearing about them in classes. There are teaching theories in which the student is not supposed to learn about something, but they are guided to rediscover it by their tutors.

I used to teach fencing, in old days people would do months of footwork before being allowed to have a go at the actual sport. This changed because once the possibility of fatal encounters disappeared almost no one was motivated enough to go through the prerequisite.

But being clear, the footwork is the fundamental and can't be skipped.

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