Top all-time · #3272
Terence Parr
Personal blog · explained.aiaidatamath
Terence Parr's personal blog at explained.ai covers ai, data and math. Since 2018, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Terence Parr's explainers on matrix calculus, decision tree and regularization visualisations, and random forest feature importance, aimed at people learning the maths behind machine learning.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Deep explanations of machine learning and related topics.
Most-linked posts?
- The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-12-05
- Matrix Calculus for Deep Learning3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-12-14
- How to Visualize Decision Trees3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-22
- A visual explanation for regularization of linear models2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-05
What Hacker News says?
Don't forget to review calculus as well. Khan Academy is a good start for learning about single variable calculus ( http://www.khanacademy.org ), but their content on multivariable calculus is a bit lacking (neural networks / deep learning use the concept of the derivatives and the gradient a lot). A good supplement for multivariable calculus would be Terence Parr and Jeremy Howard's article on "All the matrix calcu…
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/index.html
on “Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra: Vectors, Matrices, and Least Squares”Submitted The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning as a story · 610 points
HN discussionWhilst it's absolutely not required knowledge for most deep learning, if you are interested in more fully understanding the chain rule, my friend Terence Parr (the ANTLR guy) and I wrote a fairly thorough tutorial for matrix calculus https://explained.ai/matrix-calculus/index.html .
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/index.html
on “Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2019”Submitted How to visualize decision trees as a story · 343 points
HN discussionFor decision trees, I really like http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ and https://explained.ai/decision-tree-viz/index.html . For Random Forests, I like this one: https://www.gormanalysis.com/blog/random-forest-from-top-to-... , which also has a link to a decision-tree post. That blog also has the best GBM explainer I've seen yet (Gradient Boosted Machines are the _other_ tree-ensembling meth…
Comment linking /decision-tree-viz/index.html
on “Random Forests for Complete Beginners”Submitted Matrix Calculus for Deep Learning as a story · 296 points
HN discussion> why in 2019 is there no good way to visualize a decision tree? You should try https://github.com/parrt/dtreeviz . From Terrence Parr and Vince Grover, released in Sept 2018. There is a good background article on the problem space and their design iterations here: https://explained.ai/decision-tree-viz/index.html
Comment linking /decision-tree-viz/index.html
on “Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?”Submitted How to Visualize Decision Trees as a story · 272 points
HN discussion> Is math a problem for non-academic researchers? It takes a while to figure out how to read academic papers, but it's largely about learning the notation. In the end, it maps back to the code you write anyway in most cases, so it's just another way of writing stuff you already know. It's not so much linear algebra you need, since much of that is not relevant to AI. It's really matrix calculus. Which is largely abou…
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/
on “My story as a self-taught AI researcher”Submitted A visual explanation for regularization of linear models as a story · 163 points
HN discussionAnd his visualization of constrained optimization is astonishing https://explained.ai/regularization/index.html (I struggled for a long time to get the right intuition of a Lagrangian)
Comment linking /regularization/index.html
on “How to Visualize Decision Trees”Submitted Explaining RNNs without neural networks as a story · 126 points
HN discussionwait what - another math textbook recommendation by academicians. ML and MLL are arts of tinkering not academic subjects. Though Steven Johnson is the real deal and writes lots of code, Edelman is a shyster/imposter who used to ride the coattails of G. Strang and now shills for Julia where he makes most of his money. You don't need, and won't understand ML/LLM by reading textbooks. 1. If you want to have a little fu…
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/
on “Matrix Calculus (For Machine Learning and Beyond)”Submitted The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning as a story · 67 points
HN discussioncareful, the "free" feature importance (e.g. decreasing Gini) has a lot of known issues: https://explained.ai/rf-importance/index.html
Comment linking /rf-importance/index.html
on “Random Forest vs. Neural Network”Submitted Clarifying exceptions and visualizing tensor operations in deep learning code as a story · 62 points
HN discussion3b1b yt channel calculus & LA https://explained.ai/matrix-calculus/ khan academy - Multivariable Calculus course by Grant Sanderson(3b1b fame)
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/
on “Neural Networks: Zero to Hero”Submitted Matrix Calculus for Deep Learning as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI liked this (and I fixed a few bugs in it too): https://explained.ai/matrix-calculus/
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/
on “Ask HN: Calculus Refresher for AI/ML?”Submitted How to explain gradient boosting as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSince you're working in the field - yes, obviously. It's not even that much math - the building blocks are fairly straightforward linear algebra and calculus. Here's a nice, fairly detailed, summary - https://explained.ai/matrix-calculus/ . But if you haven't taken undergraduate level single/multivariable calculus and linear algebra, I would take them from MIT Opencourseware even if it's just to fight off the impost…
Comment linking /matrix-calculus/
on “Ask HN: As a professional, does it worth it to learn the math behind NN?”Submitted How to Visualize Decision Trees as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to explain gradient boosting as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Matrix Calculus You Need for Deep Learning as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Deep explanations of machine learning and related topics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gradient boosting performs gradient descent as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Deep explanations of machine learning (by Terence Parr) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Matrix Calculus for Deep Learning as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
