Matrix math, where have you been all my life?
Because I want to for reals understand how machine learning works, I'm relearning calculus, plus a few pre-calc subjects I somehow missed the first time around.
I have three observations:
- There really is an amazing amount of instructional material just sitting there on the internet for anyone to use for free.
- A lot of it is really badly presented. (I'm getting by with mostly Khan Academy content, but it's a bit disorganized and very oriented around teaching-to-the-test instead of here's-why-this-matters. If anyone has better suggestions I'd love to hear!)
- Software developers and mathematicians approach the same problems completely differently, and the mutual incomprehension when they try to explain things to one another is pretty amazing to watch. I suspect there are a lot of easy discoveries and inventions to be found if those groups could come up with a common language....