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xeromallast Saturday at 5:08 PM6 repliesview on HN

Sometimes I read a comment on HN that is so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek. Love reading it just to see someone work though!


Replies

alexpotatolast Saturday at 5:25 PM

> so advanced that it's just as readable to me as Greek

I used to feel this way about statistics.

The language and terms are hard to understand and many of the formulas are taught as "just memorize this" instead of building up from first principles.

But then I started using statistics to analyze something I cared a lot about (paintball) and I quickly realized it's like learning anything new:

- there is jargon

- and core concepts

- when you learn the above, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.

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spicyusernamelast Saturday at 9:18 PM

Not to diminish the comment, but most things are not as complex as they sound when phrased in everyday language or sound much more complex than they are when phrased in technical language.

Technical language is a tool that allows insiders to say less and refer to more, and to be specific, but it's just a tool. Most things can be described in accessible ways.

I think you'd be surprised at what you could understand and at just how few domains are truly complex enough that a layman couldn't understand with a little bit of patience and an accessible summary.

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semiquaverlast Saturday at 5:42 PM

Thanks for posting this comment, it makes me proud of myself to be able to partially comprehend the comment :)

BobbyTables2last Sunday at 4:37 AM

It took me a while to understand a lot of these math concepts.

Turns out people doing Engineering research are using a very small but powerful bag of tricks from a handful of few famous Mathematicians. The concepts are named after them!

georgeburdelllast Sunday at 1:34 AM

I don’t think OP made much effort to make the comment accessible to non-experts, and so it should be taken as a gauge of the fundamental difficulty of the topic.

Vasbarloglast Saturday at 10:54 PM

Έχεις απόλυτο δίκιο!