
Stuff I Learnt in 2019 - yarapavan
http://bollu.github.io/#stuff-i-learnt-in-2019
======
andrepd
For general relativity: I never miss an opportunity to recommend "Spacetime
and Geometry" by Sean Carrol. The only book I needed for my GR course (plus
Misner Thorne and Wheeler for occasional reference).

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j7ake
Your learning rate must be off the charts to accomplish this impressive list.

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lordgrenville
IIUC this entire blog is one long README.md, sorted by recency. I understand
that it makes it easier for the author to post but it's not the most user-
friendly.

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bollu
Do you have a better recommendation for ease of use v/s easy to browse? What
do you think of having an auto-generated "table of contents" page? Does that
sound good?

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lordgrenville
That would definitely help. I understand you though: writing is hard and it
makes sense to want as little friction as possible.

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questionforyou
@bollu, Congratulations! Impressive year by any measure.

Could you go into some detail with your learning process?

Such as how much time do you have to pursue all these subjects? How you manage
and allocate that time?

Maybe provide a case study of your approach to reading 'Information Theory,
Inference, and Learning Algorithms'? how long did it take you to finish this
book?

Do you typically complete all the exercises in the books you read? Do you try
to reproduce each paper?

And any other relevant details you think might help others to "learn" quicker
would be appreciative.

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mkagenius
> I recently learnt that the Toeffili and Hadamard gates are universal for
> quantum computation. The description of these gates involve no complex
> numbers.

Hmm, these are matrices so essentially complex numbers?

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andrepd
Correct. You can pretty much always replace complex numbers with 2x2 matrices.

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mdolon
In case the author is reading, I'm curious to hear how you structure your day
and what your learning routine is like. Any tips you can share?

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InfiniteBeing
I like this. I think I am going to try to keep a list next year, and maybe it
might somehow even help keep me on the path of learning.

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aliveupstairs
post the `[https://`](https://`) part too. I don't have https everywhere
everywhere.

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je42
Learned quite a bit about: K8S, Kotlin, Android Architecture Components.

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tutfbhuf
Maybe you could fit in some Category Theory in 2020.

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bollu
Hey, author here! I do know some category theory, as I dabble with Haskell.
Another motivation for me to study more algebraic topology & geometry is to
see category theory in the setting where it was originally developed. Do you
have recommendations for what results from Category Theory proved fruitful for
you?

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tutfbhuf
For me as a programmer, it helps me to think more abstract about the problems
that come up. I apply CT similar to the way other programmers apply object-
oriented design patterns. I think it's a great framework of thought.

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_virtu
What do I need to do to get on this level?

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darod
i started learning judo.

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theflyinghorse
Fan fact - John Carmack is a judo and jiu-jitsu player [1]

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We1wlYOP0Xg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We1wlYOP0Xg)

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NikolaeVarius
I need to study more

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georgehaake
I hate “learnt”

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closed
What do you hate about it?

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georgehaake
It sounds like an "ain't" version of learned. I just read this from Grammarly:

"Learnt and learned are both used as the past participle and past tense of the
verb to learn. Learned is the generally accepted spelling in the United States
and Canada, while the rest of the English-speaking world seems to prefer
learnt."

Apparently I'm an egocentric American.

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_____s
Yeah, we were taught "learnt" in school (British English).

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nighthawk1
Some kind of focus would do this young man well. Also thinking how to turn
that all information into action or outcomes.

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bollu
What would you recommend I focus on? I personally work on compilers as part of
research, so that's "focus". My current broad goal is to learn all the parts
of math that I feel might wind up becoming useful for applied math in the next
50-60 years. So no arithmetic geometry, yes algebraic geometry.

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udkl
Biology. Bio informatics is going to be important in the next decade.

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adamnemecek
This is a solid list.

