
Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning - Triskell
https://triskell.github.io/2016/11/13/Supervised-Learning-and-Unsupervised-Learning.html
======
Triskell
AUTHOR HERE. For those who have been "chocked" or "disappointed" by the title
of this series. All my apologies, but I assume this title. I did not wanted to
offense anyone. Yes, this is how I explain it to her, there is no sexism in
there. She is very smart, but not in the same domains, she loves history and
books which I do not know anything about, so she wanted to understand what I
do, just curiosity. It won't be about her, I'm not a pervert to show her in my
blog. But she inspired me this series. So, why not refereing to her in the
title? That's a bit like a tribute to her who inspired me, that's sentimental.
No offense. (BTW, I she is a bit confused about some reactions, and she is
glad I was thinking to her when I wrote those posts) Again apoligies for those
who thought it was sexist or anything else. By no mean I wanted to offend you.

~~~
adityab
Don't worry, you're doing fine.

There are a multitude of political opinions out there (which does not mean
they are bad ideas), and a large number of people who like to criticize others
based on this because they get to feel superior. Such people also think that
everything (including the personal) is political and make no distinction
between the intentional and unintentional.

It's wise to just ignore them when the criticism is tangential. One only has
finite mental bandwidth for these things, there is no way to cover the full
combinatorial explosion of things that _could_ be interpreted as offensive.

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hellogoodbyeeee
I don't care for this explanation style as it is really hand-wavy and makes
machine learning seem very magical. I prefer explanations working through a
simple regression, k-means example, or a baby decision tree. These are easy to
show graphically (in two dimensions).

~~~
jaynos
A much better example is here: [http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-
learning-part-1/](http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/)

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Zikes
What a world this would be if the 40+ comments on this post were actually
about the article's subject matter.

~~~
jbpetersen
Hacker News has a policy of avoiding political articles. The internet
interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Therefore Hacker News
commenters post off-topic politics.

Hacker News could really benefit from a sister site that focuses on current
politics and political issues as a way to draw it away from Hacker News
itself.

~~~
Zikes
But Tumblr already exists.

Honestly, though, that's what 4chan did with /b/ and that seems to work.
Though externally most people associate 4chan with /b/, it does free up the
other communities on the site to run smoothly, or so I'm told.

Still, judging by most of those comments in here I think people are just eager
for an excuse to "call out" someone's missteps. They say it's just a
suggestion, or a recommendation, but the implicit warning is there: do what we
say or we'll make you hurt. The fear is obvious, given the number of green
throwaways people have made just to try to have a rational argument.

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Triskell
AUTHOR HERE. No more "sexism", I changed the title of the series to "Inky
Machine Learning", to refer to my ink drawing and my inky fingers. Old pages
related to this does not exist anymore. By no mean I wanted to hurt anybody,
all my apologies.

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tbrownaw
Unsupervised learning is like playing "one of these things is not like the
others". Unsupervised learning also happens "in a vacuum", in that nothing
means anything / relates to the outside world.

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ainiriand
So this is a compilation of articles regarding ML in a simple approach. That
is why you say to my girlfriend? Are you proud of that?

~~~
helloasdfasdf
I believe the original author meant "my girlfriend" as in, the girl he was
with specifically, whom he had explained ML to, and kept a journal of.

I think it was uncharitable for you to assume he was implying anything about
girls generally. If it had been "Machine Learning: for your girlfriend," that
could have been reasonable to make that assumption over.

Edit: revising, shortening, done~

~~~
itschekkers
It is pretty obvious that the title is unnecessarily gendered, and that in
this case it plays into broader stereotypes about women in STEM fields. I'm
not sure why you are so insistent on defending it -- this is exactly the kind
of thing that needs to stop happening if we really want a more inclusive
atmosphere in the field.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
The author recently tried to explain to his SO some tech stuff, including
machine learning. Then, he wrote a blog post about it. However, he's not
allowed to share it because... sexism? My ex and I followed very different
career paths. I was clueless about fine art restoration and she didn't know
much about programming. Yet we used to explain stuff to each other all the
time, _For Dummies_ style. OP follows the same quirky approach.

There's nothing inclusive in your attitude, only anger and blindness to the
most obvious, harmless interpretation.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
It makes the title less useful to focus on the gendered, social relationship
than who the girlfriend was as a student. In the case of my friends,
"girlfriend" could mean anything from "basically math illiterate" to "has a
PhD in a technical field that isn't ML and doublechecks my proofs cause she's
smarter than me".

The author decided not to tell us anything about who he taught -- where on
that range she fell -- just what her social role was... His.

That's what people are objecting to: in an article about teaching your gf
something, why not make it about who she is as a student and what she learned
instead of her social status as your mate?

It's that fundamental phrasing and framing of her, as it being more important
to know her social status than anything about her academics, that people
object to.

(All that aside, this is a silly thing to complain about. But it isn't
nothing.)

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Swenrekcah
OT: I agree with some people here that the "girlfriend" part seems a bit
condescending. I also think it was not meant that way. User IanCal here
suggested some helpful tips to avoid that vibe, I think he is correct. But to
those attacking OP for this tiny bit of "un-PC-ness" in the title: Just stop.
Go on with your day and don't read this if you don't like his style, or offer
helpful feedback like IanCal. I'll wager that this constant bombardment of PC
enforcement created the sentiment that allowed Donald Trump to say the
stupidest things in the world and feel like a breath of fresh air just because
he didn't care about being PC.

~~~
jonahrd
A problem like sexism is so wide-spread and deep-rooted in the software
industry that it's imperative to _not_ just ignore every "one-off" occurrence,
but instead to point it out.

A criticism of the choice of language used in this article is a very valid
criticism to make, and doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the article as a
whole. It might just help the author understand how he can improve his future
writings!

~~~
tbrownaw
_If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I
will find something in them which will hang him._ \--Cardinal Richelieu

Persecuting people for not stripping personal accounts of details that happen
to match forbidden stereotypes seems rather oppressive. And like something
that will tend to de-legitimize the cause you're using to justify said
persecution.

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andendau
Why not novice instead of your girlfriend? You don't even mention her in the
articles so why cling to a distracting title?

~~~
helloasdfasdf
Perhaps his girlfriend and him felt it was a group effort, and it had
sentimental value to have that in the title.

When my girlfriend and I pursue things intellectually, we feel sentimental
about it to some extent.

I can sympathize with OP for choosing the risk of uncharitable readings

It's also largely possible OP did not anticipate the risk of uncharitable
readings, and it was not an informed decision

I can understand both an uninformed and informed decision on the part of OP

Edit: clarify, shorten, extend, extend, done ~

~~~
dopu
He should change it. Regardless of the intention, this is how it will be
interpreted.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
He ' _shouldn 't_' do anything. Stupid people purposely avoid the most obvious
meaning of the title just to show off their morality.

~~~
dopu
This isn't about "showing off morality." It's about making the tech community
welcoming to people of all genders. Your attitude is part of the reason that
doing so is so difficult.

~~~
ythn
What about an article by a woman entitled:

"Elementary school unions explained to my husband"

Would that make you feel like the education community is unwelcoming of all
genders?

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Doesn't the education community struggle with exactly this problem,
perception, and male parental involvement in general?

I know dads feel excluded because a number of educational things specifically
mention moms.

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melipone
"Machine learning explained to my girlfriend" is a show stopper. How can we
have this kind of sexist attitude in 2016?

I will denounce all such posts. This is not PC, it's stopping bigotry wherever
it lives.

