Do you also have math anxiety?
I mean, you're learning AI and Machine Learning, everything's going fine, and then a math equation shows up in front of you. And the moment it does, you jump straight to a conclusion: if I don't understand this equation, I can't learn any further in this chapter.
So today I want to teach you something: math is just a language, and equations are like sentences. Once you understand what these Greek symbols stand for and how to read them, you can decode pretty much any equation.
Here's an example. I'm sure you already know how to calculate an average. You've done it a hundred times. But if I show you this formula for it, you probably won't understand a single thing:
µ = (1 / N) Σ xᵢ
That right there is a formula to calculate an average. Nothing more. Let's break down the words:
- µ (mu) — this lowercase Greek letter represents the mean (the average) of a population.
- Σ (sigma) — this uppercase Greek letter is the summation symbol. It's a mathematical command that tells you to add up a sequence of numbers.
- xᵢ — this represents each individual value or number in your dataset. The i is an index, indicating you start at the first number and go up to the last.
- N — this is the total number of values in your dataset.
See, it's that easy. Add up every value, divide by how many values there are — that's it. You already knew how to do this, you just didn't recognize the words.
I put together a full guide with more Greek letters and the important notation you need to know to read any equation. Grab it below — and all set!