[tomrod]

Disclaimer: working and occasionally researching in the space.

The first paragraph is clear linear algebra terminology, the second looked like deeper subfield specific jargon and I was about to ask for a citation as the words definitely are real but the claim sounded hyperspecific and unfamiliar.

I figure a person needs 12 to 18 months of linear algebra, enough to work through Horn and Johnson's "Matrix Analysis" or the more bespoke volumes from Jeffrey Humpheries to get the math behind ML. Not necessarily to use AI/ML as a tech, which really can benefit from the grind towards commodification, but to be able to parse the technical side of about 90 to 95 percent of conference papers.

[danielmarkbruce]

One needs about 12 to 18 hours of linear algebra to work though the papers, not 12 to 18 months. The vast majority of stuff in AI/ML papers is just "we tried X and it worked!".

[miki123211]

You can understand 95+% of current LLM / neural network tech if you know what matrices are (on the "2d array" level, not the deeper lin alg intuition level), and if you know how to multiply them (and have an intuitive understanding why a matrix is a mapping between latent spaces and how a matrix can be treated as a list of vectors). Very basic matrix / tensor calculus comes in useful, but that's not really part of lin alg.

There are places where things like eigenvectors / eigenvalues or svd come into play, but those are pretty rare and not part of modern architectures (tbh, I still don't really have a good intuition for them).

[devmor]

I was about to respond with a similar comment. The majority of the underlying systems are the same and can be understood if you know a decent amount of vector math. That last 3-5% can get pretty mystical, though.

Honestly, where stuff gets the most confusing to me is when the authors of the newer generations of AI papers invent new terms for existing concepts, and then new terms for combining two of those concepts, then new terms for combining two of those combined concepts and removing one... etc.

Some of this redefinition is definitely useful, but it turns into word salad very quickly and I don't often feel like teaching myself a new glossary just to understand a paper I probably wont use the concepts in.

[buildbot]

This happens so much! It’s actually imo much more important to be able to let the math go and compare concepts vs. the exact algorithms. It’s much more useful to have semantic intuition than concrete analysis.

Being really good at math does let you figure out if two techniques are mathematically the same but that’s fairly rare (it happens though!)

[whimsicalism]

> There are places where things like eigenvectors / eigenvalues or svd come into play, but those are pretty rare and not part of modern architectures (tbh, I still don't really have a good intuition for them)

This stuff is part of modern optimizers. You can often view a lot of optimizers as doing something similar to what is called mirror/'spectral descent.'

[tomrod]

Indeed. "Spectral" describes the collection of eigenvalues!

[tomrod]

Eigenvector/eigenvalues: direction and amount of stretch a matrix pushes a basis vector.

[cultofmetatron]

for anyone looking to get into it, mathacademy has a full zero to everythign you need pathway that you can follow to mastery

https://mathacademy.com/courses/mathematics-for-machine-lear...

[DenisM]

There is no mention of llm there?

[cultofmetatron]

if you want to use llms, just download one and play with it. if you want to understand llms enough to push research forward, learn the underlying math

[tomrod]

100%

[gpjt]

OP here -- agreed! I tried to summarise (at least to my current level of knowledge) those 12-18 hours here: https://www.gilesthomas.com/2025/09/maths-for-llms

[jhardy54]

> 12 to 18 months of linear algebra

Do you mean full-time study, or something else? I’ve been using inference endpoints but have recently been trying to go deeper and struggling, but I’m not sure where to start.

For example, when selecting an ASR model I was able to understand the various architectures through high-level descriptions and metaphors, but I’d like to have a deeper understanding/intuition instead of needing to outsource that to summaries and explainers from other people.

[tomrod]

I was projecting as classes, taken across 2 to 3 semesters.

You can gloss the basics pretty quickly from things like Kahn academy and other sources.

Knowing Linalg doesn't guarantee understanding modern ML, but if you then go read seminal papers like Attention is All You Need you have a baseline to dig deeper.