I’m Back: Math, AI, and Me

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while. Nine months, to be exact. Life took a few unexpected turns, and my plans for tech deep dives got sidelined. But I’m back, and this time I’m diving into math.

Why math? Because if you really want to understand AI, machine learning, or any modern tech, you need to get the math behind it. Not just memorize formulas, but actually grasp the ideas. So for the past few months I’ve been quietly rebuilding my math foundation from scratch. It’s been quite a ride - surprisingly fun in your 40s :)

Right now I’m working through three challenging but fascinating books:

• Precalculus Made Difficult

• Full Frontal Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach

• The Dark Art of Linear Algebra: An Intuitive Geometric Approach

I’m not a math expert. Just sharing my journey. What trips me up, what clicks, and everything in between. If you’re into tech, AI, or curious about someone learning it out loud, you might enjoy this.

So, what’s coming up?

• Posts on what I’m learning every couple of weeks, or whenever there’s something worth sharing

• Occasional lessons from my time as a director and engineer

• A few tech book reviews

• More frequent, shorter updates on X (@rspivak)

If this sounds like your thing, stick around. Otherwise, feel free to unsubscribe anytime. No hard feelings.

Excited to reconnect,

Ruslan

P.S. First post drops in about two weeks. I’ll break down what I’ve learned so far from precalculus, calculus, and linear algebra.