7 ms·

Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning

82 points by Triskell 10y ago

ainiriand 10y ago
So this is a compilation of articles regarding ML in a simple approach. That is why you say to my girlfriend? Are you proud of that?
- Triskell 10y ago
  That's not a compilation of articles. That's the way I explain it to my girlfriend (who does not know anything to computer science and machine learning) what I do, with simple and fun words (by no way, I want to be precise : There are way more articles who do it better than me.). That's a way to be more familiar with basic vocabulary of ML, to show there is no magic and that ML can be interesting. I hope that would help people to discover ML and it will attract more people to it. That is the kind of fun article I missed when I started to wonder what is ML.
  - Red_Tarsius 10y ago
    I enjoyed your article. The style felt quirky, welcoming and grabs the attention of the average Joe. Please ignore the users who got triggered by the 'girlfriend' part, they are going to be offended by anything you do. I hope you keep posting!
    - Burritamos 10y ago
      It's a bit disingenuous to call the people here 'triggered'. No one seems emotionally distraught by the author's choice of words. Most of the comments here seem to be pitched in a constructive and explanatory manner (the meat of which you might entirely disagree with), but calling them 'triggered' only seems to try to undermine their opinion without actually providing any counterpoint.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    Thanks for writing it up. A few suggestions: Some of the response here I think would be avoided if you added a bit of an introduction to your girlfriend (this doesn't need to be identifying), as it seems to be being taken as a general "women don't know X" rather than "my girlfriend didn't know about X so this is how I explained it". This would also help set the scene a bit, who is the audience? Are they very, slightly, just somewhat or not at all technical? Perhaps some additions that would be good are what are her questions? What's she asking you in response to these things? They have a good chance of being the kind of questions your readers might be asking too, and so having questions and your answers might be a nice thing to see.
- helloasdfasdf 10y ago
  I believe the original author meant "my girlfriend" as in, the girl he was with specifically, whom he had explained ML to, and kept a journal of. I think it was uncharitable for you to assume he was implying anything about girls generally. If it had been "Machine Learning: for your girlfriend," that could have been reasonable to make that assumption over. Edit: revising, shortening, done~
  - whistlerbrk 10y ago
    I took it as his girlfriend who happens to be a laymen. Indeed uncharitable readings abound
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - itschekkers 10y ago
    It is pretty obvious that the title is unnecessarily gendered, and that in this case it plays into broader stereotypes about women in STEM fields. I'm not sure why you are so insistent on defending it -- this is exactly the kind of thing that needs to stop happening if we really want a more inclusive atmosphere in the field.
    - Red_Tarsius 10y ago
      The author recently tried to explain to his SO some tech stuff, including machine learning. Then, he wrote a blog post about it. However, he's not allowed to share it because... sexism? My ex and I followed very different career paths. I was clueless about fine art restoration and she didn't know much about programming. Yet we used to explain stuff to each other all the time, For Dummies style. OP follows the same quirky approach. There's nothing inclusive in your attitude, only anger and blindness to the most obvious, harmless interpretation.
      - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
        It makes the title less useful to focus on the gendered, social relationship than who the girlfriend was as a student. In the case of my friends, "girlfriend" could mean anything from "basically math illiterate" to "has a PhD in a technical field that isn't ML and doublechecks my proofs cause she's smarter than me". The author decided not to tell us anything about who he taught -- where on that range she fell -- just what her social role was... His. That's what people are objecting to: in an article about teaching your gf something, why not make it about who she is as a student and what she learned instead of her social status as your mate? It's that fundamental phrasing and framing of her, as it being more important to know her social status than anything about her academics, that people object to. (All that aside, this is a silly thing to complain about. But it isn't nothing.)
- IanCal 10y ago
  I explain tech things to my wife with a simple approach, and she explains biology to me with a simple approach. We're both technical and educated, but we have our own fields of expertise.
andendau 10y ago
Why not novice instead of your girlfriend? You don't even mention her in the articles so why cling to a distracting title?
- helloasdfasdf 10y ago
  Perhaps his girlfriend and him felt it was a group effort, and it had sentimental value to have that in the title. When my girlfriend and I pursue things intellectually, we feel sentimental about it to some extent. I can sympathize with OP for choosing the risk of uncharitable readings It's also largely possible OP did not anticipate the risk of uncharitable readings, and it was not an informed decision I can understand both an uninformed and informed decision on the part of OP Edit: clarify, shorten, extend, extend, done ~
  - dopu 10y ago
    He should change it. Regardless of the intention, this is how it will be interpreted.
    - Red_Tarsius 10y ago
      He 'shouldn't' do anything. Stupid people purposely avoid the most obvious meaning of the title just to show off their morality.
      - dopu 10y ago
        This isn't about "showing off morality." It's about making the tech community welcoming to people of all genders. Your attitude is part of the reason that doing so is so difficult.
        Zikes 10y ago
        Right now it doesn't seem very welcoming to people with non-technical girlfriends that are curious about machine learning.
hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
I don't care for this explanation style as it is really hand-wavy and makes machine learning seem very magical. I prefer explanations working through a simple regression, k-means example, or a baby decision tree. These are easy to show graphically (in two dimensions).
- jaynos 10y ago
  A much better example is here: http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fucking_idiot 10y ago
This is basically why we shouldn't let morons into this field. Hey OP? Can you do a matrix multiplication? They teach this scat in first-year medical school. This isn't ML moron.
- sctb 10y ago
  We've banned this account, the main account, and the other throwaways.
  - ska 10y ago
    At least this account (name) showed a surprising amount of self awareness ;)
Swenrekcah 10y ago
OT: I agree with some people here that the "girlfriend" part seems a bit condescending. I also think it was not meant that way. User IanCal here suggested some helpful tips to avoid that vibe, I think he is correct. But to those attacking OP for this tiny bit of "un-PC-ness" in the title: Just stop. Go on with your day and don't read this if you don't like his style, or offer helpful feedback like IanCal. I'll wager that this constant bombardment of PC enforcement created the sentiment that allowed Donald Trump to say the stupidest things in the world and feel like a breath of fresh air just because he didn't care about being PC.
- Hasz 10y ago
  Says English is his second language -- maybe the connotation is different, and he didn't mean to be condescending in the slightest. Kind of like ELI5 -- not actually a five year old, but literally taken, it would sound fairly strange.
- charlieflowers 10y ago
  Sigh. Please. Just use Occam's razor here. The simplest explanation is that his girlfriend is non-technical. Therefore, the explanation will be simple and approachable to non-experts. He could have had a long title that said that, or he could have expressed it much more succinctly as he did. You have to actively read more into it to find a way to be offended by it.
- jonahrd 10y ago
  A problem like sexism is so wide-spread and deep-rooted in the software industry that it's imperative to _not_ just ignore every "one-off" occurrence, but instead to point it out. A criticism of the choice of language used in this article is a very valid criticism to make, and doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the article as a whole. It might just help the author understand how he can improve his future writings!
  - tbrownaw 10y ago
    If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. --Cardinal Richelieu Persecuting people for not stripping personal accounts of details that happen to match forbidden stereotypes seems rather oppressive. And like something that will tend to de-legitimize the cause you're using to justify said persecution.
melipone 10y ago
"Machine learning explained to my girlfriend" is a show stopper. How can we have this kind of sexist attitude in 2016? I will denounce all such posts. This is not PC, it's stopping bigotry wherever it lives.
Zikes 10y ago
What a world this would be if the 40+ comments on this post were actually about the article's subject matter.
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  Hacker News has a policy of avoiding political articles. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Therefore Hacker News commenters post off-topic politics. Hacker News could really benefit from a sister site that focuses on current politics and political issues as a way to draw it away from Hacker News itself.
  - Zikes 10y ago
    But Tumblr already exists. Honestly, though, that's what 4chan did with /b/ and that seems to work. Though externally most people associate 4chan with /b/, it does free up the other communities on the site to run smoothly, or so I'm told. Still, judging by most of those comments in here I think people are just eager for an excuse to "call out" someone's missteps. They say it's just a suggestion, or a recommendation, but the implicit warning is there: do what we say or we'll make you hurt. The fear is obvious, given the number of green throwaways people have made just to try to have a rational argument.
Triskell 10y ago
AUTHOR HERE. For those who have been "chocked" or "disappointed" by the title of this series. All my apologies, but I assume this title. I did not wanted to offense anyone. Yes, this is how I explain it to her, there is no sexism in there. She is very smart, but not in the same domains, she loves history and books which I do not know anything about, so she wanted to understand what I do, just curiosity. It won't be about her, I'm not a pervert to show her in my blog. But she inspired me this series. So, why not refereing to her in the title? That's a bit like a tribute to her who inspired me, that's sentimental. No offense. (BTW, I she is a bit confused about some reactions, and she is glad I was thinking to her when I wrote those posts) Again apoligies for those who thought it was sexist or anything else. By no mean I wanted to offend you.
- adityab 10y ago
  Don't worry, you're doing fine. There are a multitude of political opinions out there (which does not mean they are bad ideas), and a large number of people who like to criticize others based on this because they get to feel superior. Such people also think that everything (including the personal) is political and make no distinction between the intentional and unintentional. It's wise to just ignore them when the criticism is tangential. One only has finite mental bandwidth for these things, there is no way to cover the full combinatorial explosion of things that _could_ be interpreted as offensive.
tbrownaw 10y ago
Unsupervised learning is like playing "one of these things is not like the others". Unsupervised learning also happens "in a vacuum", in that nothing means anything / relates to the outside world.
Triskell 10y ago
AUTHOR HERE. No more "sexism", I changed the title of the series to "Inky Machine Learning", to refer to my ink drawing and my inky fingers. Old pages related to this does not exist anymore. By no mean I wanted to hurt anybody, all my apologies.

82 points by Triskell 10y ago

So this is a compilation of articles regarding ML in a simple approach. That is why you say to my girlfriend? Are you proud of that?

Triskell 10y ago
That's not a compilation of articles. That's the way I explain it to my girlfriend (who does not know anything to computer science and machine learning) what I do, with simple and fun words (by no way, I want to be precise : There are way more articles who do it better than me.). That's a way to be more familiar with basic vocabulary of ML, to show there is no magic and that ML can be interesting. I hope that would help people to discover ML and it will attract more people to it. That is the kind of fun article I missed when I started to wonder what is ML.
- Red_Tarsius 10y ago
  I enjoyed your article. The style felt quirky, welcoming and grabs the attention of the average Joe. Please ignore the users who got triggered by the 'girlfriend' part, they are going to be offended by anything you do. I hope you keep posting!
  - Burritamos 10y ago
    It's a bit disingenuous to call the people here 'triggered'. No one seems emotionally distraught by the author's choice of words. Most of the comments here seem to be pitched in a constructive and explanatory manner (the meat of which you might entirely disagree with), but calling them 'triggered' only seems to try to undermine their opinion without actually providing any counterpoint.
- IanCal 10y ago
  Thanks for writing it up. A few suggestions: Some of the response here I think would be avoided if you added a bit of an introduction to your girlfriend (this doesn't need to be identifying), as it seems to be being taken as a general "women don't know X" rather than "my girlfriend didn't know about X so this is how I explained it". This would also help set the scene a bit, who is the audience? Are they very, slightly, just somewhat or not at all technical? Perhaps some additions that would be good are what are her questions? What's she asking you in response to these things? They have a good chance of being the kind of questions your readers might be asking too, and so having questions and your answers might be a nice thing to see.
helloasdfasdf 10y ago
I believe the original author meant "my girlfriend" as in, the girl he was with specifically, whom he had explained ML to, and kept a journal of. I think it was uncharitable for you to assume he was implying anything about girls generally. If it had been "Machine Learning: for your girlfriend," that could have been reasonable to make that assumption over. Edit: revising, shortening, done~
- whistlerbrk 10y ago
  I took it as his girlfriend who happens to be a laymen. Indeed uncharitable readings abound
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- itschekkers 10y ago
  It is pretty obvious that the title is unnecessarily gendered, and that in this case it plays into broader stereotypes about women in STEM fields. I'm not sure why you are so insistent on defending it -- this is exactly the kind of thing that needs to stop happening if we really want a more inclusive atmosphere in the field.
  - Red_Tarsius 10y ago
    The author recently tried to explain to his SO some tech stuff, including machine learning. Then, he wrote a blog post about it. However, he's not allowed to share it because... sexism? My ex and I followed very different career paths. I was clueless about fine art restoration and she didn't know much about programming. Yet we used to explain stuff to each other all the time, For Dummies style. OP follows the same quirky approach. There's nothing inclusive in your attitude, only anger and blindness to the most obvious, harmless interpretation.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      It makes the title less useful to focus on the gendered, social relationship than who the girlfriend was as a student. In the case of my friends, "girlfriend" could mean anything from "basically math illiterate" to "has a PhD in a technical field that isn't ML and doublechecks my proofs cause she's smarter than me". The author decided not to tell us anything about who he taught -- where on that range she fell -- just what her social role was... His. That's what people are objecting to: in an article about teaching your gf something, why not make it about who she is as a student and what she learned instead of her social status as your mate? It's that fundamental phrasing and framing of her, as it being more important to know her social status than anything about her academics, that people object to. (All that aside, this is a silly thing to complain about. But it isn't nothing.)
IanCal 10y ago
I explain tech things to my wife with a simple approach, and she explains biology to me with a simple approach. We're both technical and educated, but we have our own fields of expertise.

andendau 10y ago

Why not novice instead of your girlfriend? You don't even mention her in the articles so why cling to a distracting title?

helloasdfasdf 10y ago
Perhaps his girlfriend and him felt it was a group effort, and it had sentimental value to have that in the title. When my girlfriend and I pursue things intellectually, we feel sentimental about it to some extent. I can sympathize with OP for choosing the risk of uncharitable readings It's also largely possible OP did not anticipate the risk of uncharitable readings, and it was not an informed decision I can understand both an uninformed and informed decision on the part of OP Edit: clarify, shorten, extend, extend, done ~
- dopu 10y ago
  He should change it. Regardless of the intention, this is how it will be interpreted.
  - Red_Tarsius 10y ago
    He 'shouldn't' do anything. Stupid people purposely avoid the most obvious meaning of the title just to show off their morality.
    - dopu 10y ago
      This isn't about "showing off morality." It's about making the tech community welcoming to people of all genders. Your attitude is part of the reason that doing so is so difficult.
      - Zikes 10y ago
        Right now it doesn't seem very welcoming to people with non-technical girlfriends that are curious about machine learning.

hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago

I don't care for this explanation style as it is really hand-wavy and makes machine learning seem very magical. I prefer explanations working through a simple regression, k-means example, or a baby decision tree. These are easy to show graphically (in two dimensions).

jaynos 10y ago
A much better example is here: http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fucking_idiot 10y ago

This is basically why we shouldn't let morons into this field. Hey OP? Can you do a matrix multiplication? They teach this scat in first-year medical school. This isn't ML moron.

sctb 10y ago
We've banned this account, the main account, and the other throwaways.
- ska 10y ago
  At least this account (name) showed a surprising amount of self awareness ;)

Swenrekcah 10y ago

OT: I agree with some people here that the "girlfriend" part seems a bit condescending. I also think it was not meant that way. User IanCal here suggested some helpful tips to avoid that vibe, I think he is correct. But to those attacking OP for this tiny bit of "un-PC-ness" in the title: Just stop. Go on with your day and don't read this if you don't like his style, or offer helpful feedback like IanCal. I'll wager that this constant bombardment of PC enforcement created the sentiment that allowed Donald Trump to say the stupidest things in the world and feel like a breath of fresh air just because he didn't care about being PC.

Hasz 10y ago
Says English is his second language -- maybe the connotation is different, and he didn't mean to be condescending in the slightest. Kind of like ELI5 -- not actually a five year old, but literally taken, it would sound fairly strange.
charlieflowers 10y ago
Sigh. Please. Just use Occam's razor here. The simplest explanation is that his girlfriend is non-technical. Therefore, the explanation will be simple and approachable to non-experts. He could have had a long title that said that, or he could have expressed it much more succinctly as he did. You have to actively read more into it to find a way to be offended by it.
jonahrd 10y ago
A problem like sexism is so wide-spread and deep-rooted in the software industry that it's imperative to _not_ just ignore every "one-off" occurrence, but instead to point it out. A criticism of the choice of language used in this article is a very valid criticism to make, and doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the article as a whole. It might just help the author understand how he can improve his future writings!
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. --Cardinal Richelieu Persecuting people for not stripping personal accounts of details that happen to match forbidden stereotypes seems rather oppressive. And like something that will tend to de-legitimize the cause you're using to justify said persecution.

melipone 10y ago

"Machine learning explained to my girlfriend" is a show stopper. How can we have this kind of sexist attitude in 2016? I will denounce all such posts. This is not PC, it's stopping bigotry wherever it lives.

Zikes 10y ago

What a world this would be if the 40+ comments on this post were actually about the article's subject matter.

jbpetersen 10y ago
Hacker News has a policy of avoiding political articles. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Therefore Hacker News commenters post off-topic politics. Hacker News could really benefit from a sister site that focuses on current politics and political issues as a way to draw it away from Hacker News itself.
- Zikes 10y ago
  But Tumblr already exists. Honestly, though, that's what 4chan did with /b/ and that seems to work. Though externally most people associate 4chan with /b/, it does free up the other communities on the site to run smoothly, or so I'm told. Still, judging by most of those comments in here I think people are just eager for an excuse to "call out" someone's missteps. They say it's just a suggestion, or a recommendation, but the implicit warning is there: do what we say or we'll make you hurt. The fear is obvious, given the number of green throwaways people have made just to try to have a rational argument.

Triskell 10y ago

AUTHOR HERE. For those who have been "chocked" or "disappointed" by the title of this series. All my apologies, but I assume this title. I did not wanted to offense anyone. Yes, this is how I explain it to her, there is no sexism in there. She is very smart, but not in the same domains, she loves history and books which I do not know anything about, so she wanted to understand what I do, just curiosity. It won't be about her, I'm not a pervert to show her in my blog. But she inspired me this series. So, why not refereing to her in the title? That's a bit like a tribute to her who inspired me, that's sentimental. No offense. (BTW, I she is a bit confused about some reactions, and she is glad I was thinking to her when I wrote those posts) Again apoligies for those who thought it was sexist or anything else. By no mean I wanted to offend you.

adityab 10y ago
Don't worry, you're doing fine. There are a multitude of political opinions out there (which does not mean they are bad ideas), and a large number of people who like to criticize others based on this because they get to feel superior. Such people also think that everything (including the personal) is political and make no distinction between the intentional and unintentional. It's wise to just ignore them when the criticism is tangential. One only has finite mental bandwidth for these things, there is no way to cover the full combinatorial explosion of things that _could_ be interpreted as offensive.

tbrownaw 10y ago

Unsupervised learning is like playing "one of these things is not like the others". Unsupervised learning also happens "in a vacuum", in that nothing means anything / relates to the outside world.

Triskell 10y ago

AUTHOR HERE. No more "sexism", I changed the title of the series to "Inky Machine Learning", to refer to my ink drawing and my inky fingers. Old pages related to this does not exist anymore. By no mean I wanted to hurt anybody, all my apologies.