That which you do not know

Okay so here I am, classic undergraduate. “Let’s try to do some research”

Obviously the most fun category is machine learning, but WOW did I not know what I was getting into.

So I read this guy’s paper. HOLY CABOOSE. It is unreadable jargon. Imagine reading this, but every word is just as complex as the word ‘jargon’. Now, imagine that you are also drinking a cup of coffee as you read this. As you note that it is a bit bitter, a friend comes over and asks you if you’ve been to the beach recently. Thanks for imagining that.

Of course, with deep thought and contemplation I am able to make out some words that I understand in the paper. The paper is about how we have a bad understanding of deep learning. The paper proposes that we must actually first understand kernel learning.

Ok, what’s a kernel? It’s something that computes dot products fast in high-dimensional space, and is useful for giving a distance metric for a loss function. Or something. Alright, I can deal with high-dimensional space. How many are we talking about? 4? 10? Hell, I’m ready to deal with 10,000. Once you get past 3 it’s all really the sa –

“In particular, many phenomena of large-scale high-dimensional inference are best understood in terms of optimization on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, where standard algorithms can sometimes have properties at odds with finite-dimensional intuition. “

Wait. Did I read that right?

Did I really just see the words “infinite dimensional”?

And like this, the paper would continually flabbergast me, defying all expectations of complexity. I would ask,

“What’s a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert space?”

Google: “It’s a special kind of Hilbert Space”.

“And what’s that?”
Google: It’s a special kind of Banach Space”

“Which is…?”

Google: “A complete vector space, you moron. It’s a special type of vector space. Don’t tell me you don’t even know that.

“Umm…”

Google: “It’s just an extension of a complete ordered field!!”
“UMMMMMMMM”
okay it actually goes about 6 levels deeper but you get the point. I have much to learn.

Oh, and I got the research position so I guess I’ll be learning over the summer. Guess that’s Original Inquiry for you. I’ll get a lot of Academic Enrichment from that. That’s what those terms mean to me.

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