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I wonder how do the people here upvote stuff. Considering that probably the entire HN community has never even heard about control theory before, let alone ha

I wonder how do the people here upvote stuff. Considering that probably the entire HN community has never even heard about control theory before, let alone have the background to understand the abstract of the book, how did this submission receive almost 100 points? Do fancy-looking titles get the most attention? Same with any math-heavy submission. Do the submitters really expect the average DevOps person, which probably makes up something like 90% of HN, be able to understand and comment on such advanced subjects? These are legitimate questions and by no means do I intend to foster a gatekeeping mentality.

ggerules 5y ago
I'm interested and understand the topic. Also, I'm interested in many mathematical topics.
- antegamisou 5y ago
  So apparently you’re a math PhD. How many times have you came across somebody with your background here? Consider that the audience here is mostly tech-literate, not STEM wizards. Which is why it’s baffling seeing exotic math words on the frontpage.
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    It really only takes a couple-few math wizards seeing a thing to vote it onto the front page for a bit, where other math wizards have a good chance of seeing it and upvoting it further. Notice that 100 upvotes only requires 100 wizards amongst the HN population. I also agree with others that the assumptions about 'mostly devops' may well be very wrong. Control theory should be at least somewhat familiar to anyone who's worked in robotics and/or aviation, as well. A whoooole lot of people dabble in robotics during undergrad, and many older software engineers get into drones (like the author of the monograph!) or flying.
igorkraw 5y ago
You are making heavy assumptions on the composition and math literacy of the HN community, the idea of people not upvoting things they don't fully understand and the difficulty of control theory. I've had this stuff in uni, forgot most of it, and re-learned it during my current studies via thinking about optimization of neural networks and I think both our understanding of things and pedagogy are improving to the point that it's not unreasonable to expect tech-interested recent high school grads to have an intuition, if not a formal understanding of control theory. 3B1B might be the most "to blame" for this, but also just the proliferation of tutorials, making etc. PID controllers are not very complicated, people dig into robotics on their own and find PID might not be enough => voila, they self teach observability, controllability, lie algebras etc.
k__ 5y ago
Observability is all the hype in the cloud (monitoring) space right now. HN folks love them some group theory (i.e. Haskell). So it makes totally sense for me.
mhh__ 5y ago
10% is a lot of people.
jbay808 5y ago
I'm a control theorist with an engineering physics background and although I don't have a strong foundation in manifolds and Lie groups, it's a subject I've been interested in for other reasons. A book that looks to apply one to the other, in pursuit of a challenging yet practical controls problem, might be both a fascinating read in and of itself, and a useful introduction to the topic aimed at someone with my background. I'm considering buying the book and I upvoted in part because I'm curious to see what further discussion is fostered on this subject.

ggerules 5y ago

I'm interested and understand the topic. Also, I'm interested in many mathematical topics.

antegamisou 5y ago
So apparently you’re a math PhD. How many times have you came across somebody with your background here? Consider that the audience here is mostly tech-literate, not STEM wizards. Which is why it’s baffling seeing exotic math words on the frontpage.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  It really only takes a couple-few math wizards seeing a thing to vote it onto the front page for a bit, where other math wizards have a good chance of seeing it and upvoting it further. Notice that 100 upvotes only requires 100 wizards amongst the HN population. I also agree with others that the assumptions about 'mostly devops' may well be very wrong. Control theory should be at least somewhat familiar to anyone who's worked in robotics and/or aviation, as well. A whoooole lot of people dabble in robotics during undergrad, and many older software engineers get into drones (like the author of the monograph!) or flying.

igorkraw 5y ago

You are making heavy assumptions on the composition and math literacy of the HN community, the idea of people not upvoting things they don't fully understand and the difficulty of control theory. I've had this stuff in uni, forgot most of it, and re-learned it during my current studies via thinking about optimization of neural networks and I think both our understanding of things and pedagogy are improving to the point that it's not unreasonable to expect tech-interested recent high school grads to have an intuition, if not a formal understanding of control theory. 3B1B might be the most "to blame" for this, but also just the proliferation of tutorials, making etc. PID controllers are not very complicated, people dig into robotics on their own and find PID might not be enough => voila, they self teach observability, controllability, lie algebras etc.

k__ 5y ago

Observability is all the hype in the cloud (monitoring) space right now. HN folks love them some group theory (i.e. Haskell). So it makes totally sense for me.

mhh__ 5y ago

10% is a lot of people.

jbay808 5y ago

I'm a control theorist with an engineering physics background and although I don't have a strong foundation in manifolds and Lie groups, it's a subject I've been interested in for other reasons. A book that looks to apply one to the other, in pursuit of a challenging yet practical controls problem, might be both a fascinating read in and of itself, and a useful introduction to the topic aimed at someone with my background. I'm considering buying the book and I upvoted in part because I'm curious to see what further discussion is fostered on this subject.