totally agree with you. i'm usually on the applications side of things, and you benefit enormously if you can understand the math behind an algorithm (it's als

totally agree with you. i'm usually on the applications side of things, and you benefit enormously if you can understand the math behind an algorithm (it's also pretty much required for implementing most papers). that being said, actually writing a new paper is a completely different beast. in fact, many people who can write machine learning papers aren't going to be that good at actually implementing a useful solution without lots of engineering resources backing them up. there are hax, then there are math skills. overlap is rare.