December was all about computer science and machine learning. Simon endlessly watched Welch Labs fantastic but freakishly challenging series Learning to See and even showed me all the 15 episodes, patiently explaining every concept as we went along (like underfitting and overfitting, recall, precision and accuracy, bias and variance). Below is the table of contents he made of the series:
While watching the series, he also calculated the solutions to some of the problems that Welch Labs presented, like the question about the number of possible rules (= grains of sand) for a simple ML problem if memorisation is applied. His answer was that the grains of sand would cover all land on earth:
Simon loved the historical/philosophical part of the course, too. Especially the juxtaposition of memorising vs. learning, the importance of learning to make assumptions, futility of bias-free learning, and the beautiful quotes from Richard Feynman!
I have since then found another Feynman quote that fits Simon’s learning style perfectly (and I believe is the recipe to anyone’s successful learning as opposed to teaching to the test): “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” We have discussed the possibilities of continuing at the university again. I have also asked Simon how he sees himself applying his knowledge down the road, trying to understand what academic or career goals he may have set for himself, if any. Does he have a picture of himself in five years from now, where does he want to be by then? He got very upset, just like when asked to sum himself up in one sentence for an interview last spring. “Mom, I’m just having fun!”
A beautiful humbling lesson for me.
Geeks out of the box 