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eapriv

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Basic Math Textbook: The Napkin Project

web.evanchen.cc
245 points·by eapriv·9 miesięcy temu·73 comments

“Clean” code, horrible performance

computerenhance.com
739 points·by eapriv·3 lata temu·907 comments

comments

eapriv
·16 dni temu·discuss
Are there any pages of French in “Crime and Punishment”?
eapriv
·w zeszłym miesiącu·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 miesiące temu·discuss
Looks like AI slop in (some of) the thumbnail images. Why would anyone do that?
eapriv
·2 miesiące temu·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 miesięcy temu·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 miesięcy temu·discuss
The problem is “to add two numbers”. The meta-problem is “to learn how computers work”.
eapriv
·8 miesięcy temu·discuss
Removing layers usually improves stability.
eapriv
·8 miesięcy temu·discuss
Sounds like most of these problems come from using Python.
eapriv
·8 miesięcy temu·discuss
Spoiler: it’s about AI.
eapriv
·8 miesięcy temu·discuss
No, it says nothing about LLM output being invertible.
eapriv
·9 miesięcy temu·discuss
You are wrong. Prime numbers are fundamental to mathematics.
eapriv
·9 miesięcy temu·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 miesięcy temu·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
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
Spoiler: it’s not about how GPUs work, it’s about how to use them for machine learning computations.
eapriv
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
Yet people wouldn’t write a Fortran compiler in Fortran, or a MATLAB compiler in MATLAB.
eapriv
·w zeszłym roku·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
·w zeszłym roku·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).