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eapriv

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Basic Math Textbook: The Napkin Project

web.evanchen.cc
245 points·by eapriv·9 mesi fa·73 comments

“Clean” code, horrible performance

computerenhance.com
739 points·by eapriv·3 anni fa·907 comments

comments

eapriv
·16 giorni fa·discuss
Are there any pages of French in “Crime and Punishment”?
eapriv
·mese scorso·discuss
> Late last year I started writing a math blog and decided to use LLMs to polish/enhance my writing.

Why would you do that in the first place? If you are just starting writing about math, I assume your goal would be to get better at it, and using LLMs is not how you get better at writing.
eapriv
·2 mesi fa·discuss
Looks like AI slop in (some of) the thumbnail images. Why would anyone do that?
eapriv
·2 mesi fa·discuss
The problem is the use of AI. It’s a reliable indicator that the author doesn’t actually care about the quality of the work, so I shouldn’t bother to read the text.
eapriv
·5 mesi fa·discuss
Not sure what “your own” in the title is supposed to mean if you are running a model that you didn’t train using a framework that you didn’t write on a server that you don’t own.
eapriv
·7 mesi fa·discuss
The problem is “to add two numbers”. The meta-problem is “to learn how computers work”.
eapriv
·8 mesi fa·discuss
Removing layers usually improves stability.
eapriv
·8 mesi fa·discuss
Sounds like most of these problems come from using Python.
eapriv
·8 mesi fa·discuss
Spoiler: it’s about AI.
eapriv
·8 mesi fa·discuss
No, it says nothing about LLM output being invertible.
eapriv
·9 mesi fa·discuss
You are wrong. Prime numbers are fundamental to mathematics.
eapriv
·9 mesi fa·discuss
If I were to write such a text, it would have a lot more about building intuition for advanced mathematical concepts. This intuition is extremely valuable, but missing from almost all advanced-level texts. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to put into words, and probably quite personal.
eapriv
·9 mesi fa·discuss
I submitted it, and the word “basic” is mine, because the author doesn’t really go deep into what I would consider “advanced” mathematics. It can be a good prerequisite for advanced things, though.
eapriv
·anno scorso·discuss
Spoiler: it’s not about how GPUs work, it’s about how to use them for machine learning computations.
eapriv
·anno scorso·discuss
Yet people wouldn’t write a Fortran compiler in Fortran, or a MATLAB compiler in MATLAB.
eapriv
·anno scorso·discuss
“Nice” doesn’t mean “well suitable for writing a compiler in”. It’s strange to think that all languages should be equally good for writing all kinds of things, and choosing a web language for a non-web task is doubly strange.
eapriv
·anno scorso·discuss
It’s not obvious from the text, but the compiler was previously written in TypeScript (which was kind of a strange choice for the language to write a compiler in).