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Re:Machine learning is easier than it looks by bnegreve on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:25PM (#6771651)
> When was the last time you saw a stat/math paper in machine learning with comments/structure? And guess what, its as undecipherable as code without comments/structure.

What do you mean? Academic papers are usually written in plain english with mathematical formulas when it's necessary. What kind of comments would you like to see?

Re:Machine learning is easier than it looks by dylandrop on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:45PM (#6771773)
Well, to quote the article, you can see things like "p is absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesque measure on En" and hundreds of variable names and sub/superscripts, none of which are intuitively named. It's really hard to argue that anyone who is not in academia would understand this without passing through it multiple times.

That being said, I think mathematicians should be perfectly permitted to do this, seeing as most people who read their papers are themselves, mathematicians. Thus spelling out every dumb detail would probably just be a waste of their time for the one case that the brave soul who is a programmer tries to decipher it.

Re:Machine learning is easier than it looks by icelancer on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @06:03PM (#6771892)
Like another comment above alluded to, mathematicians tend to have parallel gripes about code. While technically we're speaking the same language, the dialect is often quite different.
Re:Machine learning is easier than it looks by dylandrop on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @08:02PM (#6772431)
Yes, which is why I mentioned that it makes sense for mathematicians to use the language they do.