Why Machines Learn
by Anil Ananthaswamy · first published 2024
5mentions
1recommended by
5HN commenters
2025–2026first – last mentioned
20% recommend80% neutral
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1. Why Machines Learn - Anil Ananthaswamy Fantastic exposition of machine learning. The author does an amazing job of bringing a technical subject down to an easily readable level. 2. The Joy of Abstraction - Eugenia Cheng…
on “Ask HN: End of Year Book Recommendations” ↗Btw - Has anybody here read Anil Ananthaswamy's Why Machines Learn : The Elegant Math behind Modern AI ? Would like to get a technical review of this.
on “My Favorite Book on AI” ↗I’m starting down a similar path with these two books How AI Works - https://nostarch.com/how-ai-works + Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/677608/why-machines...
on “Ask HN: How to learn AI from first principles?” ↗would you recommend "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI" to someone with more knowledge? what's the level of the book? for beginners or intermediates?
on “My Favorite Books of 2025” ↗…know how everything worked - even though it had no hope of replicating most of it. Looking back, it was an ideal start to a 40 year career as a software engineer. And of course currently I'm reading "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI" because the urge to understand the machines I want to master and control hasn't gone away.
on “I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch” ↗