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Seeking Wisdom

Seeking Wisdom
Attention is all you need – Part 1 This is the 10th post in my series on building a toy GPT. Read my earlier posts first for better...
a year ago
132
a year ago
This is the 10th post in my series on building a toy GPT. Read my earlier posts first for better understanding. I asked ChatGPT to complete the sentence given the phrase: “I chose that bank for”. It completed the sentences sensibly. Here are the four sentences it generated: In...
Seeking Wisdom
A great investor is a great rejector I tend to grasp math concepts better from books written for other fields. Take linear algebra for...
9 months ago
131
9 months ago
I tend to grasp math concepts better from books written for other fields. Take linear algebra for example — I developed a stronger understanding and appreciation for it after reading the book Modeling Life. Similarly, the investing book What I Learned About Investing from Darwin...
Seeking Wisdom
Modeling Life: Oscillation This is my 3rd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I...
10 months ago
123
10 months ago
This is my 3rd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my earlier posts first to get a good grounding on the foundations covered in the book. A system can exhibit three different types of behavior: equilibrium,...
Seeking Wisdom
Modeling Life: Equilibrium This is my 2nd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I...
10 months ago
118
10 months ago
This is my 2nd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my earlier post first to get a good grounding on the foundations covered in the book. A system can exhibit three different types of behavior: equilibrium, oscillation,...
Seeking Wisdom
Ruturaj Gaikwad, P-value, and Bayes’ Theorem IPL is one of the greatest entertainments for a cricket lover like me. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is...
9 months ago
118
9 months ago
IPL is one of the greatest entertainments for a cricket lover like me. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is my favorite team. Ruturaj Gaikwad, the new CSK captain for the IPL 2024 season, lost 10 out of 13 tosses: LLLLWLLLLLLWL. The probability of seeing the sequence LLLLWLLLLLLWL is...
Seeking Wisdom
What I Learned from The South Asian Health Solution and wearing a Continuous Glucose Monitor We all know avocados are healthy, and coke is bad. Yet we can’t help but gulp down a coke with a...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
We all know avocados are healthy, and coke is bad. Yet we can’t help but gulp down a coke with a plate full of french fries. It takes an enormous amount of energy to break bad habits. I’ve broken bad habits under two conditions: (a) it’s a do-or-die situation, or (b) you have a...
Seeking Wisdom
Make Every Day Count It was a 2012 evening, and I was driving home from the office. I was worried about finishing a big...
a year ago
112
a year ago
It was a 2012 evening, and I was driving home from the office. I was worried about finishing a big project at work on time. I’d made the journey from the office to my home so many times, my car almost seemed to know the way by itself. My hands were on the wheel, but…
Seeking Wisdom
Stay the course I spend a couple of weeks every February keeping up with my investments, timing it to coincide with...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
I spend a couple of weeks every February keeping up with my investments, timing it to coincide with the release of Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. I found something interesting while performing this ritual this time. I came across Aswath Damodaran’s website, where he has...
Seeking Wisdom
Modeling Life: Linear Algebra This is the 4th post in my series summarizing the key takeaways from reading the book Modeling Life....
9 months ago
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9 months ago
This is the 4th post in my series summarizing the key takeaways from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my previous posts first to gain a solid understanding on how to model dynamic systems. This post focuses on how linear algebra is employed in modeling dynamic...
Seeking Wisdom
Embeddings – Part 1 This is the 8th post in my series on building a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend...
a year ago
98
a year ago
This is the 8th post in my series on building a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend reading my earlier posts first. I love playing and watching cricket. The dominance India showed in the recently concluded World Cup is astounding. I have never seen anything like it in...
Seeking Wisdom
Modeling Life: Foundations Herman Wouk was researching for a novel he planned to write about World War II. He interviewed...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Herman Wouk was researching for a novel he planned to write about World War II. He interviewed several physicists at Caltech who had worked on the bomb, including Richard Feynman. After the interview, Feynman asked Wouk if he knew Calculus. “No,” said Wouk. To which Feynman...
Seeking Wisdom
Focus on the process, not the outcome Woorkeri Raman, a former Indian cricketer and former coach of the India women’s national cricket...
6 months ago
95
6 months ago
Woorkeri Raman, a former Indian cricketer and former coach of the India women’s national cricket team, has two non-negotiables. As an offspinner, you must never get cut, and you must never get driven through the covers. Even when Ravichandran Ashwin takes five wickets, Raman will...
Seeking Wisdom
Embeddings – Part 2 This is the 9th post in my series on building a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend...
a year ago
90
a year ago
This is the 9th post in my series on building a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend reading my earlier posts first. Word embeddings convert words into fixed-length numerical arrays. Each number in these arrays corresponds to a specific characteristic of the word, such...
Seeking Wisdom
Few thoughts on life, psychology, and mindset I’ve been writing my thoughts on life, psychology, and mindset for some time. I’ve considered...
a year ago
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a year ago
I’ve been writing my thoughts on life, psychology, and mindset for some time. I’ve considered transferring some of these writings from Notion into this post. In physics, three laws can explain 99% of observations. However, in life, psychology, and mindset, 99 laws can barely...
Seeking Wisdom
Neural Networks – Part 3 This is the seventh post in my series on making a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is the seventh post in my series on making a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend reading my earlier posts first. The MNIST dataset is the “hello world” of machine learning, containing images of handwritten digits that are used to train machine learning models. It...
Seeking Wisdom
Attention is all you need – Part 2 This is the 11th and final post in my series on building a toy GPT. Read my earlier posts first for...
a year ago
78
a year ago
This is the 11th and final post in my series on building a toy GPT. Read my earlier posts first for better understanding. I concluded the previous post by explaining how Attention works. You can download the Excel sheet and Python code that explains how Attention from here and...
Seeking Wisdom
Neural Networks – Part 2 This is my sixth post in a series on building a toy GPT. I recommend that you read my previous posts...
a year ago
72
a year ago
This is my sixth post in a series on building a toy GPT. I recommend that you read my previous posts before reading this one. When using linear and logistic regression, which involve just a single linear equation, calculating derivatives is easy since there is only one equation...
Seeking Wisdom
From Linear to Logistic – Sigmoid Curve and Log Loss Can we predict the likelihood of heart disease from sleep and exercise? This is my fourth post on my...
a year ago
71
a year ago
Can we predict the likelihood of heart disease from sleep and exercise? This is my fourth post on my journey to build a toy GPT. I’d recommend checking out my previous posts before diving into this one. Let’s train a model to predict heart disease using sleep and exercise data....
Seeking Wisdom
Hello LLMs! When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, consider an extreme or simple case. This...
a year ago
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a year ago
When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, consider an extreme or simple case. This will often give you the insight needed to move forward. I nodded in agreement when I read the above lines from the book Maxims for Thinking Analytically. ChatGPT took the world by...
Seeking Wisdom
It’s a treasure trove of health insights! Use Insulin wisely Life on Earth started simple. For nearly 2 billion years, tiny single-celled...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Use Insulin wisely Life on Earth started simple. For nearly 2 billion years, tiny single-celled organisms dominated. Then, a lucky accident changed everything. One cell swallowed another, and the swallowed cell became mitochondria, the powerhouse of complex cells. This chance...
Seeking Wisdom
How a Machine Learns How a fly helped Descartes to invent the Cartesian plane René Descartes (1596 – 1650), the famous...
a year ago
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a year ago
How a fly helped Descartes to invent the Cartesian plane René Descartes (1596 – 1650), the famous philosopher and mathematician, was lying in his bed, eyes fixed on a fly on the ceiling. As he pondered how to accurately describe the fly’s position, Descartes visualized the...
Seeking Wisdom
Neural Networks – Part 1 This is my 5th post on my journey to build a toy GPT. I’d recommend checking out my previous posts...
a year ago
27
a year ago
This is my 5th post on my journey to build a toy GPT. I’d recommend checking out my previous posts before diving into this one. Take the statement, ‘I will only go for a walk if it’s nice outside AND I have free time.’ This can be neatly represented using a truth table. We can…
Seeking Wisdom
How a Machine Learns – Part 2 I’m truly impressed by how accurately LLMs grasp natural language and consistently provide spot-on...
a year ago
26
a year ago
I’m truly impressed by how accurately LLMs grasp natural language and consistently provide spot-on answers. Through these posts, I’ll build a toy GPT from scratch using Python and unpack everything that goes inside the LLMs, including the math it uses. This is my third post on my...
Seeking Wisdom
Books I loved reading in 2022
over a year ago
Seeking Wisdom
Case for indexing Warren Buffet made a compelling case in favor of indexing in the 2021 Berkshire Hathaway’s AGM. In...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Warren Buffet made a compelling case in favor of indexing in the 2021 Berkshire Hathaway’s AGM. In 1989, 65% of the top 20 global companies were domiciled in Japan. After three decades, 65% of the top 20 global companies are from the US. No companies from Japan made into the top...
Seeking Wisdom
Few thoughts on Learning I was learning how to program during the mid to late 90s. Finding learning material in a world...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
I was learning how to program during the mid to late 90s. Finding learning material in a world without the Internet, Google, and YouTube was incredibly challenging. I struggled to understand how pointers in C worked. Yashavant Kanetkar’s Understanding Pointers in C book helped me...
Seeking Wisdom
Buffett’s Bathtub Memory I love reading physical books. But there’s one problem with physical books. My shelf space is...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I love reading physical books. But there’s one problem with physical books. My shelf space is limited. To overcome the shelf space limitation, I developed a simple fitness function for my books. Books that I won’t reread will be donated to the library. Don’t get me wrong. They...
Seeking Wisdom
What I learned from Prof. Sanjay Bakshi’s Behavioral Economics Course at FLAME University I had the privilege to attend Prof. Sanjay Bakshi’s Behavioral Economics course at FLAME University....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I had the privilege to attend Prof. Sanjay Bakshi’s Behavioral Economics course at FLAME University. Being his student since 2011, I realized my dream by sitting in his class for 3.5 days. Prof. Bakshi taught us around 20 different models from Charlie Munger’s Psychology of Human...