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Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

dafriedman97.github.io

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Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#21

Post by stevesimmons »

dafrdman wrote: post #17
stevesimmons wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice work! Can we flag edits on github somewhere? I found a typo at line 60 of https://dafriedman97.github.io/mlbook/content/conventions_no... , where your second "is written as $$" is missing the empty line before the "$$".

Thanks for the catch! Ugh those pesky $$s. Changed it now. Looks like you found the repository. Do you think it would be enough to raise an issue there? (at https://github.com/dafriedman97/mlbook )? I'll look into linking directly from the book to the repo. Thanks!

Added the issue.

Yes, I did find the repo. Hesitated adding the issue right away because the source files have ".md.txt" and ".html", but not the original ".md" files for me to fix them directly.

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#22

Post by andi999 »

fartcannon wrote: post #12

Excellent! Very kind of you to do this. Are you accepting comments? If not, ignore the following. :) As someone who learned how to program from trial and error via tutorials on the internet (some of the people who are going to read your book are people like me), I just have one comment: Try not leaning on libraries in your tutorials. I know it sounds insane to suggest you not use numpy in any kind of ML tutorial, but…

I disagree slightly. I think numpy (and scipy is so central to do anything mathematical in python (actually you could say python is just the glue for these libraries) that maybe one should spend a chapter or two on numpy instead of not using it.

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#23

Post by dafrdman »

stevesimmons wrote: post #21
dafrdman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the catch! Ugh those pesky $$s. Changed it now. Looks like you found the repository. Do you think it would be enough to raise an issue there? (at https://github.com/dafriedman97/mlbook )? I'll look into linking directly from the book to the repo. Thanks!

Added the issue. Yes, I did find the repo. Hesitated adding the issue right away because the source files have ".md.txt" and ".html", but not the original ".md" files for me to fix them directly.

Yeah the book was built with JupyterBook. It's an awesome tool but I lose track of what it does to the .md files when creating the website.

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#24

Post by ohuhu »

dafrdman wrote: post #15
fartcannon wrote: post #12

Excellent! Very kind of you to do this. Are you accepting comments? If not, ignore the following. :) As someone who learned how to program from trial and error via tutorials on the internet (some of the people who are going to read your book are people like me), I just have one comment: Try not leaning on libraries in your tutorials. I know it sounds insane to suggest you not use numpy in any kind of ML tutorial, but…

Thanks so much for your feedback. Definitely open to comments! I agree 100% that any use of packages can be intimidating for newbies. I experimented at first with creating the models without using numpy and I thought that it actually made it less clear rather than more clear. It's obviously a tradeoff--you see where everything comes from (rather than np.mysterious_function()) but you take 5 lines of code to do the sa…

I'd love to include the book to our company internal learning resources. Can you include an official license by any chance? Thank you

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#25

Post by uoaei »

dafrdman wrote: post #15
fartcannon wrote: post #12

Excellent! Very kind of you to do this. Are you accepting comments? If not, ignore the following. :) As someone who learned how to program from trial and error via tutorials on the internet (some of the people who are going to read your book are people like me), I just have one comment: Try not leaning on libraries in your tutorials. I know it sounds insane to suggest you not use numpy in any kind of ML tutorial, but…

Thanks so much for your feedback. Definitely open to comments! I agree 100% that any use of packages can be intimidating for newbies. I experimented at first with creating the models without using numpy and I thought that it actually made it less clear rather than more clear. It's obviously a tradeoff--you see where everything comes from (rather than np.mysterious_function()) but you take 5 lines of code to do the sa…

Perhaps you could reduce the set of numpy functions used in your code to a minimal set (exp, sum, max, min, etc.) and then build fancier functions up from there. This affords you the speed and conciseness of using numpy arrays while limiting the abstractions that could obfuscate the inner workings of some of the fancier functions you might use (e.g. softmax).

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#26

Post by fartcannon »

dafrdman wrote: post #15
fartcannon wrote: post #12

Excellent! Very kind of you to do this. Are you accepting comments? If not, ignore the following. :) As someone who learned how to program from trial and error via tutorials on the internet (some of the people who are going to read your book are people like me), I just have one comment: Try not leaning on libraries in your tutorials. I know it sounds insane to suggest you not use numpy in any kind of ML tutorial, but…

Thanks so much for your feedback. Definitely open to comments! I agree 100% that any use of packages can be intimidating for newbies. I experimented at first with creating the models without using numpy and I thought that it actually made it less clear rather than more clear. It's obviously a tradeoff--you see where everything comes from (rather than np.mysterious_function()) but you take 5 lines of code to do the sa…

That's a good point. If you had to explain how everything works without the libraries, you'd probably end up writing a book on how pandas and numpy works, not how ML works.

An appendix is a great idea!

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#27

Post by dafrdman »

ohuhu wrote: post #24
dafrdman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for your feedback. Definitely open to comments! I agree 100% that any use of packages can be intimidating for newbies. I experimented at first with creating the models without using numpy and I thought that it actually made it less clear rather than more clear. It's obviously a tradeoff--you see where everything comes from (rather than np.mysterious_function()) but you take 5 lines of code to do the sa…

I'd love to include the book to our company internal learning resources. Can you include an official license by any chance? Thank you

I hadn't even considered licensing it. Want to email me and we can talk? My email is dafrdman@gmail.com. That said, you're welcome to use it (though my lawyer father suggests I say that this "verbal contract" is revocable and non-exclusive).

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#28

Post by dafrdman »

fartcannon wrote: post #26
dafrdman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for your feedback. Definitely open to comments! I agree 100% that any use of packages can be intimidating for newbies. I experimented at first with creating the models without using numpy and I thought that it actually made it less clear rather than more clear. It's obviously a tradeoff--you see where everything comes from (rather than np.mysterious_function()) but you take 5 lines of code to do the sa…

That's a good point. If you had to explain how everything works without the libraries, you'd probably end up writing a book on how pandas and numpy works, not how ML works. An appendix is a great idea!

Good ideas. I think I'll try to add an appendix, minimize the number of numpy functions used, and explain any of the weird ones that are real time savers. Thanks for all your thought.

Re: Show HN: ML From Scratch – free online textbook

#30

Post by shadowoflight »

This looks fantastic! As a bit of a selfish question, have you considered also offering a downloadable epub of this book? I've been trying to keep my long-form digital reading to my eReader, for the sake of not looking at LCDs all day, but that makes web ebooks a bit of a pain due to e-ink not liking scrolling very much.
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