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Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

arxiv.org

81–90 of 177 posts

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#81

[flagged]

I find that programming languages is a compromise between the need to communicate between a human and the (dumb) machine on the one hand, and the need to make this communication more or less readable by humans. Mathematical notation was invented to calculate (automate reasoning) and as a way of communication between (smart) humans.

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#82

As someone who has a deeper knowledge of programming rather than math, I find the mathematical notation here to be harder to understand than the code (even in a programming language I do not know). Does anyone with a stronger mathematical background here find it easier to understand the math as written more easily than the source code?

All three authors are PhDs or PhD-candidates in mathematics. The notation is extremely dense. I'm curious who their target audience of "students and scientists" are for this book.

Likely graduate students with a very theoretical interest. Some theoretically-oriented scientists and engineers are also basically applied mathematicians. It is presumably targeted at people that want to further develop the theoretical aspects of learning, as opposed to applied practitioners

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have math you're going to hoodwink yourself into thinking you can get to AGI by scale alone. There are very smart people who think we can get to AGI by scale alone - they call that the "the scaling hypothesis", in fact. I think they're wrong but I thought they knew a fair amount of math. What math would you use to describe the limitations of deep learning? My impression is there aren't any exact theorems…

> "the scaling hypothesis" Oh boy, don't get me started.... I first off should say that by no means do I think any of these people (at least those publishing) are dumb. You can also be a genius in one direction and a fucking idiot in another, and that's okay. Certainly describes me haha (well less on the genius side and more on the functioning idiot side. So take everything I say with a grain of salt). Don't get me w…

Very interesting. Are any of your lectures available online?

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#84
post #76
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical notation is more concise, which may take some getting used to. One reason is that it is optimized for handwriting. Handwriting program code would be very tedious, so you can see why mathematical notation is the way it is. Apart from that, there is no “the code” equivalent. Mathematical notation is for stating mathematical facts or propositions. That’s different from the purpose of the code you would writ…

The last part was a big hurdle for me as an early undergrad. I was a fairly strong programmer toward the end of high school, and was trying to think of math as programming. That worked for the fairly algorithmic high school stuff and I got good grades, but it made I was awful at writing proofs. I also went through a phase where I used all the logical notation and rules to manipulate it possible in order to make proof…

This is essentially my problem. I started writing programs at a young age and was introduced (unknowingly) to many more advanced mathematical concepts from that perspective rather than through pure mathematics. What was it that helped break this paradigm for you?

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#85

As someone who has a deeper knowledge of programming rather than math, I find the mathematical notation here to be harder to understand than the code (even in a programming language I do not know). Does anyone with a stronger mathematical background here find it easier to understand the math as written more easily than the source code?

It's not too difficult to understand, but this introduction isn't written with pedagogy in mind IMO

This is the probably the most succinct explanation, and as an experienced perl developer, I admire your brevity.

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#86
post #74
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason skip connections improve performance is that they improve gradient flow in very deep networks. Can you prove this statement?

Neither do the authors in the book, and I'd argue that after (only) reading the book, the reader wouldn't be equipped to attempt this either (see my other post in this thread), so I think the parent poster has a point.

Yes, I have a very good point in fact. But the above comment purposely chooses not to argue with it, because it's easier to ignore it entirely and argue something else.

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Coming from physics (B.Sc only) the notation is refreshingly familiar and straightforward. My topology and analysis classes were basically like this. In fact, this pdf is literally the resource I've been searching for as many others are far too ambiguous and handwavey focusing more on libraries and APIs than what's going on behind the scenes. If only there were a similar one for microeconomics and macroeconom…

Bishop’s Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning is one example that has tremendous depth and much clearer notation. Deep Learning by Goodfellow et al. is another example, albeit with less depth than Bishop. I’m glad you’re enjoying the book. The approach is ideal for a very small subset of the ML population, no doubt that was their intention. I’m just weighing in that it’s entirely possible to cover this material w…

Thanks for highlighting Bishop to me! I've self-taught through various resources esp. Goodfellow et al 2016. It's taken me a number of years to rebuild my math knowledge so that I feel comfortable with Goodfellow's treatment and look forward to learning from the Bishop book. Fwiw, I've found the math notation in the Goodfellow textbook to be among the best I've ever seen in terms of consistency and clarity. Some other books I enjoy, for example, do not seem to make any typographic indication of whether an object is a vector, scalar, or other. :(

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there are many very mathematically inclined deep learning researchers. It's an empirical science because the mathematical tools we possess are not sufficient to describe the phenomena we observe and make predictions under one unified theory. Being an empirical science does not mean that the field is a "wild west". Deep learning models are subjectable to repeatable controlled experiments, from which you can improv…

The main point you're making is fair The only gripe I have is > Being an empirical science does not mean that the field is a "wild west" I think what you meant to say is: "Being an empirical science does not necessarily mean that the field is a \"wild west\"" you clearly haven't seen the social sciences > Good practitioners know this sure? Edit: Removed unnecessary portions that wouldn't have continued the conversati…

I think the necessarily is clearly implied from context.

Re: Mathematical Introduction to Deep Learning: Methods, Implementations, and Theory

#89
post #76
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical notation is more concise, which may take some getting used to. One reason is that it is optimized for handwriting. Handwriting program code would be very tedious, so you can see why mathematical notation is the way it is. Apart from that, there is no “the code” equivalent. Mathematical notation is for stating mathematical facts or propositions. That’s different from the purpose of the code you would writ…

The last part was a big hurdle for me as an early undergrad. I was a fairly strong programmer toward the end of high school, and was trying to think of math as programming. That worked for the fairly algorithmic high school stuff and I got good grades, but it made I was awful at writing proofs. I also went through a phase where I used all the logical notation and rules to manipulate it possible in order to make proof…

I don't know that has anything to do with programming.

Arithmatic and writing proofs are very different skills. There is going to be a gap for everyone.

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