[duckqlz]

> “Math Basics” is quite the misnomer—it gives the impression that one would need to study all of the contents of this book to be an effective practitioner in CS or ML.

To me basics mean that if you study this entire book you won’t be able to understand ML otherwise it would say comprehensive. Furthermore the math presented in this book are all taught in 1st year courses for most CS programs I’ve encountered.

> Keep in mind it can take an hour, and sometimes way more, to really absorb a single page of a math.

Learning is a personal experience and happens at differing rates for different people. While I do agree this book is rather terse and would serve as a good reference any added explanations around the proofs would force a split to multiple publications so I can see why the authors chose to present it in the way they did.

Overall I have found this text easy to digest and well formulated and thank the authors and poster.

[jefft255]

Which CS program? I think you’re more than exaggerating. They don’t teach topology, FEM and abstract algebra in “most” CS program. These are just three random examples; most of the book is wayyy more advanced than what I would expect to learn in freshman CS.

[TheOtherHobbes]

This book seems to be designed as a primer for PhD research students - which might include some talented final year undergrads heading in that direction.

If that's your level, it might reasonably be called "basic."

For everyone else - no.

[plopilop]

> Furthermore the math presented in this book are all taught in 1st year courses for most CS programs I’ve encountered.

From what I see this book is much more complete than a first year course, or even the whole curriculum of a classical CS education.

I'm quite familiar with math, but I never encountered wavelet theory, Gauss-Seidel method, Rayleigh-Ritz theorem, and many more. My knowledge about other subjects such as Hermitian spaces, quaternions, finite elements is quite superficial.

And I've only listed elements of Part I.

[tapland]

You do need to look further than chapter one before making statements about the content and what grades you'd learn it in.

A lot of this is year 2 (and 3!) even in engineering physics.