Top all-time · #235
Math ∩ Programming
Personal blog · jeremykun.com · on HN as j2kunmathprogramming
Math ∩ Programming is a personal blog at jeremykun.com about math and programming. Since 2012, 196 different Hacker News readers have linked it 400 times, most often “Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 19 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kun's blog for its primers and explainers on math, probability, elliptic curves and FHE, and as an entry point for programmers learning math.
- Recommended for · 19 comments
- Called excellent, awesome, useful and gentle; primers, ECC, FHE and bandit posts recommended as entry points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2013-02-08
- Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers (2013)8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-05-17
- /8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-10-28
- Math ∩ Programming8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-01-14
- Teaching Mathematics – Graph Theory (2011)6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-05-12
- Singular Value Decomposition Part 1: Perspectives on Linear Algebra6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-04-18
- A High-Level Technical Overview of Homomorphic Encryption6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-05-05
- Eigenfaces, for Facial Recognition6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-06-06
- Introducing Elliptic Curves5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-12-20
- The Boosting Margin, or Why Boosting Doesn’t Overfit – Math ∩ Programming4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-09-21
What Hacker News says?
One thing I added to my blog, which is less "micro" but still quite important I feel, is syndicating articles on social media. I don't think static site generators have good support for this, so I had to roll my own: https://www.jeremykun.com/shortform/2024-05-12-2028/
Comment linking /shortform/2024-05-12-2028/
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics as a story · 937 points
HN discussionI added this on my blog ( https://www.jeremykun.com/posts/ ) and I even find it useful as replacing 90% of the need for a search bar. I haven't yet re-added a search feature since I migrated off Wordpress to hugo
Comment linking /posts/
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted For mathematicians, = does not mean equality as a story · 289 points
HN discussion> How do you actually read math, physics and programming books? > Reading them the same way as you'd read a novel doesn't seem right. Indeed it doesn’t. As the author of the book in this post points out on his blog [1] in math you focus on learning the syntax first, just like in programming. Off the top of my head I can recommend pre-reading a chapter before reading it: go through theorems, bold/italic text, graphs,…
Comment linking /2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-mathematics-for-programmers/
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted Math ∩ Programming as a story · 282 points
HN discussionI am a huge fan of Jeremy's blog. Found his primers on a multitude of topics very useful - https://jeremykun.com/primers/ As a Math guy who got into the world of programming relatively recently, I am on the opposite side of the spectrum I suppose but I'm gonna order this nonetheless to support him.
Comment linking /primers/
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted A Quasipolynomial Time Algorithm for Graph Isomorphism: The Details as a story · 238 points
HN discussionwtf is wrong with hn. >[sorry if I am being blunt, but it's how I feel] you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself. >Here is a rule of thumb that in my experience applies well to almost everything in mathematics this is aspirational pretension - everyone claims to appreciate formal purity /after/ they've learn…
Comment linking /
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted Math ∩ Programming as a story · 236 points
HN discussionApparently he was a TA as a math PhD student at UIC. Now is a programmer working at Google. He wrote a bunch of posts on his website over the years, https://jeremykun.com/main-content/
Comment linking /main-content/
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted Markov chain Monte Carlo without the bullshit (2015) as a story · 233 points
HN discussionLooks like no: "No solutions, sadly, but maybe that would be a good idea for a GitHub repo associated with the book…" https://jeremykun.com/2018/12/01/a-programmers-introduction-...
Comment linking /2018/12/01/a-programmers-introduction-to-mathematics/
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted Markov Chain Monte Carlo Without All the Bullshit (2015) as a story · 229 points
HN discussion(OP here.) Fair enough—thanks for the thoughtful clarification. By the way, I'm a big fan of your "Math ∩ Programming" articles. People who found my blog interesting will certainly think the same of yours: https://jeremykun.com/
Comment linking /
on “My unusual hobby”Submitted A High-Level Technical Overview of Homomorphic Encryption as a story · 220 points
HN discussionThe graph isomorphism protocol for Zero Knowledge Proofs. I think it's really elegant and easily understandable. Especially if you haven't seen a ZKP protocol before, it seems like it should be impossible, and then once you see the example, it seems so natural. An example discussion from google: https://jeremykun.com/2016/07/05/zero-knowledge-proofs-a-pri...
Comment linking /2016/07/05/zero-knowledge-proofs-a-primer/
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite elegant/beautiful algorithm?”Submitted Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers as a story · 213 points
HN discussionI wrote an essay response to this proposal that you might enjoy: https://jeremykun.com/2020/05/17/musings-on-a-new-interface-...
Comment linking /2020/05/17/musings-on-a-new-interface-for-mathematics/
on “So you want to study mathematics”Submitted Bezier Curves and Picasso as a story · 205 points
HN discussion>And I am an advanced math geek. For those that may not know, j2kun also writes an on-going expository machine learning series on his mathematics blog[1]. [1] http://jeremykun.com/2012/08/04/machine-learning-introductio...
Comment linking /2012/08/04/machine-learning-introduction/
on “Free “Deep Learning” Textbook by Goodfellow and Bengio Now Finished”Submitted A Good Year for “A Programmer’s Introduction to Mathematics” as a story · 167 points
HN discussionJeremy Kun's blog, Math ∩ Programming: https://jeremykun.com/ He is _super_ smart and his posts often sneak into the homepage here.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are the best personal project websites you've seen?”Submitted How to Conquer Tensorphobia as a story · 155 points
HN discussionI started my 1st year in college doing both math and computer science majors. I really love math but I just hate how (especially calculus and linear algebra courses) they just don't work on growing any intuition at all. in contrast, in my CS major we had a linear algebra class (ugh overlapping classes, huh) as well and we used computer graphics as a case study to learn about the basic concepts which was really fun a…
Comment linking /
on “Math Intuition Cheatsheet”Submitted All Horses Are the Same Color as a story · 153 points
HN discussionYou might enjoy https://jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production
Comment linking /fhe-in-production
on “Fully homomorphic encryption and the dawn of a private internet”Submitted Why There Is No Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers as a story · 145 points
HN discussionThere are FHE schemes which effectively allow putting together arbitrary logical circuits, so you can make larger algorithms FHE by turning them into FHE circuits -- Jeremy Kun's 2024 overview [1] has a good summary [1] https://www.jeremykun.com/2024/05/04/fhe-overview/ - discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40262626
Comment linking /2024/05/04/fhe-overview/
on “Fully homomorphic encryption and the dawn of a private internet”Submitted Probability Theory — A Primer as a story · 143 points
HN discussion
