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Comment by nicf | Hacker News Reader

Hi, this is the author. I've been coming back to this project off and on over the past few years but I often think of these articles as mostly something I'm writing for myself, so I'm really happy to see that some other people might be getting something out of them! I'd definitely love to hear if anyone knows anything I got wrong or can think of a way any particular explanation might be made better.

I should also take this chance to mention that I work as a private tutor and I have openings for students! Much more info here: https://nicf.net/tutoring/

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Nic was tutoring me in proof-based foundational maths when I worked as a research engineer and I have nothing but praise for him and his tutoring service. He created a hyper personalized syllabus and was able to focus in on the areas in which my understanding was shaky incredibly quickly. I only studied very foundational concepts with him, but you can glean from the articles on his website how far and wide his knowledge extends.

It feels very rare that someone with his level of intellectual depth is this interested in teaching others.

(Hi Nic! \o/)

Nic was a colleague of mine when we were both at Google Brain and he has a rare combination of both desire and ability to really understand the fundamentals of a field. (That is especially rare in ML, haha.) He also has a knack for explaining these things clearly --- cutting away the cruft and getting to the heart of the matter. I can't recommend working with / learning from him enough!

Thanks a lot for this effort! As someone wanting to learn physics from a math background, this seems to be at the right level for discussing critical high-level ideas mathematically. The article format is great as I get distracted reading book-length treatments whether they are written by physicists or mathematicians.

If you have a Patreon or similar account, let us know!

PS: The Rieman zeta function page seems to be missing a few enclosing tags leading to non-typeset latex formulae after "This gives us a nice way to pick out terms from a Dirichlet series..." and also after the Von Mangoldt function.

What a sweet idea! I don't have a Patreon at the moment but if I get around to making one I'll definitely post it on the website.

I appreciate the heads up about the typesetting --- it looks like it's due to some macros that the web-based TeX typesetter I'm using hasn't implemented. I usually go over the PDF versions more carefully than the automatically generated web versions, and I guess this is the price I pay.

EDIT: Should be fixed now!

(Looks like I can no longer edit my last message, so including this as a separate reply.) You've successfully nudged me into making a PayPal donation link, which you can find right here: https://nicf.net/donate/. I do very much appreciate the kind words.

Man oh man ... this is the good stuff. Thank you.

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