An analogy for Machine Learning: It's like baking a cake without a recipe(merqur.io)
merqur.io
An analogy for Machine Learning: It's like baking a cake without a recipe
https://merqur.io/2026/01/25/what-baking-can-teach-us-about-machine-learning/
https://merqur.io/2026/01/25/what-baking-can-teach-us-about-machine-learning/
I wrote this post after giving a talk on AI to a non-technical audience. I found that the analogy of baking a cake without a recipe was a powerful way to build intuition for how ML models are trained and, more importantly, the common ways they can fail.
I hope this is a useful mental model, whether you're an expert trying to explain your work or a newcomer to the field.
I'm here to answer any questions.
I'm also curious: what are your favorite analogies for explaining complex technical topics?