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Comment by ainiriand | Hacker News Reader

So this is a compilation of articles regarding ML in a simple approach. That is why you say to my girlfriend? Are you proud of that?

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That's not a compilation of articles. That's the way I explain it to my girlfriend (who does not know anything to computer science and machine learning) what I do, with simple and fun words (by no way, I want to be precise : There are way more articles who do it better than me.). That's a way to be more familiar with basic vocabulary of ML, to show there is no magic and that ML can be interesting.

I hope that would help people to discover ML and it will attract more people to it. That is the kind of fun article I missed when I started to wonder what is ML.

I enjoyed your article. The style felt quirky, welcoming and grabs the attention of the average Joe. Please ignore the users who got triggered by the 'girlfriend' part, they are going to be offended by anything you do. I hope you keep posting!

It's a bit disingenuous to call the people here 'triggered'. No one seems emotionally distraught by the author's choice of words. Most of the comments here seem to be pitched in a constructive and explanatory manner (the meat of which you might entirely disagree with), but calling them 'triggered' only seems to try to undermine their opinion without actually providing any counterpoint.

Thanks for writing it up. A few suggestions:

Some of the response here I think would be avoided if you added a bit of an introduction to your girlfriend (this doesn't need to be identifying), as it seems to be being taken as a general "women don't know X" rather than "my girlfriend didn't know about X so this is how I explained it". This would also help set the scene a bit, who is the audience? Are they very, slightly, just somewhat or not at all technical?

Perhaps some additions that would be good are what are her questions? What's she asking you in response to these things? They have a good chance of being the kind of questions your readers might be asking too, and so having questions and your answers might be a nice thing to see.

I believe the original author meant "my girlfriend" as in, the girl he was with specifically, whom he had explained ML to, and kept a journal of.

I think it was uncharitable for you to assume he was implying anything about girls generally. If it had been "Machine Learning: for your girlfriend," that could have been reasonable to make that assumption over.

Edit: revising, shortening, done~

I took it as his girlfriend who happens to be a laymen. Indeed uncharitable readings abound

It is pretty obvious that the title is unnecessarily gendered, and that in this case it plays into broader stereotypes about women in STEM fields. I'm not sure why you are so insistent on defending it -- this is exactly the kind of thing that needs to stop happening if we really want a more inclusive atmosphere in the field.

The author recently tried to explain to his SO some tech stuff, including machine learning. Then, he wrote a blog post about it. However, he's not allowed to share it because... sexism? My ex and I followed very different career paths. I was clueless about fine art restoration and she didn't know much about programming. Yet we used to explain stuff to each other all the time, For Dummies style. OP follows the same quirky approach.

There's nothing inclusive in your attitude, only anger and blindness to the most obvious, harmless interpretation.

It makes the title less useful to focus on the gendered, social relationship than who the girlfriend was as a student. In the case of my friends, "girlfriend" could mean anything from "basically math illiterate" to "has a PhD in a technical field that isn't ML and doublechecks my proofs cause she's smarter than me".

The author decided not to tell us anything about who he taught -- where on that range she fell -- just what her social role was... His.

That's what people are objecting to: in an article about teaching your gf something, why not make it about who she is as a student and what she learned instead of her social status as your mate?

It's that fundamental phrasing and framing of her, as it being more important to know her social status than anything about her academics, that people object to.

(All that aside, this is a silly thing to complain about. But it isn't nothing.)

No, you! If patronizing is the problem, you are way more guilty of it, making demands mostly devoid of explanations or references, insinuating a stereotype of an exclusive culture, while OP's intention is clearly inclusive (going by the title).

Edit: I have to redact a little bit, clearly "my girlfried" is possessive and exclusive, I feel slightly offended. I hope this sounds like sarcasm, although it is petty.

Not everyone spends their time constantly thinking about the degree of unnecessary gendered-ness of every piece of information they encounter.

Maybe you should stop shoving politics (no matter how well intentioned) into everything.

I explain tech things to my wife with a simple approach, and she explains biology to me with a simple approach. We're both technical and educated, but we have our own fields of expertise.

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