Jeremy Kun
jeremykun.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Jeremy Kun writes on math for programmers, covering linear algebra, cryptography, and algorithms, and wrote a book on the subject.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it for distilling complex math into approachable primers, and praise his book, A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics.
194HN people shared it
74linked it in comments
216stories submitted
7.1Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Math ∩ Programming19 people · 245 points · first shared 2014 · 36 comments on HN
- 2Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers16 people · 486 points · first shared 2013 · 130 comments on HN
- 3Singular Value Decomposition Part 1: Perspectives on Linear Algebra10 people · 23 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 4Math ∩ Programming9 people · 285 points · first shared 2013 · 37 comments on HN
- 5Eigenfaces, for Facial Recognition8 people · 18 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 6Markov chain Monte Carlo without the bullshit (2015)7 people · 701 points · first shared 2015 · 53 comments on HN
- 7A High-Level Technical Overview of Homomorphic Encryption7 people · 220 points · first shared 2024 · 44 comments on HN
- 8Bezier Curves and Picasso7 people · 216 points · first shared 2013 · 17 comments on HN
- 9Teaching Mathematics – Graph Theory (2011)7 people · 97 points · first shared 2013 · 3 comments on HN
- 10Kolmogorov Complexity – A Primer (2012)6 people · 99 points · first shared 2014 · 20 comments on HN
- 11Introducing Elliptic Curves (2014)6 people · 58 points · first shared 2014 · 4 comments on HN
- 12Singular Value Decomposition Part 2: Theorem, Proof, Algorithm5 people · 131 points · first shared 2016 · 15 comments on HN
- 13Reasonable Effectiveness of the Multiplicative Weights Update Algorithm (2017)4 people · 253 points · first shared 2017 · 17 comments on HN
- 14A Quasipolynomial Time Algorithm for Graph Isomorphism: The Details4 people · 238 points · first shared 2015 · 33 comments on HN
- 15How to Conquer Tensorphobia4 people · 158 points · first shared 2014 · 49 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
BFay · 2022-01-12
I really like Jeremy Kun's writing: https://jeremykun.com/ and recommend his book, A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics: https://pimbook.org/.
So far I've only read the first few chapters of the book, and the exercises often feel too difficult to me. But I think he does a great job of easing into mathematical notation, pausing to reflect on what a seasoned mathematician might be thinking when they come across that notation. He also makes a lot of analogies to programming, and has example programs that are easy to follow. It's helpful to have that angle to understand things from.
noquill · 2017-04-24
Jeremy Kunn has a great blog on distilling complex math ideas to primers anyone can understand. https://jeremykun.com/
Analysis of current economic conditions and policy: http://econbrowser.com/
bonobo3000 · 2015-12-30
I highly recommend Jeremy Kun's blog - Math and Programming (http://jeremykun.com/). His posts are always awesome.
j2kun · 2014-12-04
Here is a shameless plug for my own blog, [Math ∩ Programming](http://jeremykun.com/). The difficulty ranges in how much mathematical background you need, but there are also some primers aimed at programmers, starting from this [essay](http://jeremykun.com/2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-m…
I'd really love feedback from you on what you found approachable and what you found unapproachable.
a-saleh · 2014-08-01
If you are interested in math in relation with programming, I really like blog at http://jeremykun.com
If you feel your math is too rusty to follow along, http://jeremykun.com/primers/ should get you started, and then just choose the topic in http://jeremykun.com/main-content/ ... or maybe the other way around :)
fearandclothing · 2014-05-20
I really like Jeremy Kun's Math Intersect Programming (http://jeremykun.com/). This past HN thread might also be worth checking out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928762
anigbrowl · 2022-06-19
Surprised nobody has mentioned https://pimbook.org/
Jeremy Kun is a mathematician and programmer who has worked at Google and also maintains a blog at https://jeremykun.com/ (though he's writing another book more than he's blogging atm).
This does a fantastic job of teaching how you read proofs, which is otherwise a very frustrating exercise for the non-mathematician. Mathematicians, he explains, write for other mathematicians rather than students, so even rigorous proofs are full of implicit assumptions and handwaves that are deeply confusing to those outside the discipline. Kun elucidates how mathematicians think and communicate, from obscure but important typographical symbols to how conceptual formation proceeds very differently from algorithmic execution - emphasizing mathematicians' goal of understanding why mathematical objects behave a certain way as distinct from observation of how they do it. He goes back and forth between picking mathematical entities and showing how they can end up as code, and looking at code that 'just works' and backtracking to explore what makes the underlying math optimal.
It's language-agnostic and takes a slow measured approach, delving into different areas of math (calculus, linear algebra, etc) in each chapter and taking time to situate the examples in their historical and developmental context (this is foundational, that derives from the application of technique in one field to a problem in another). It's not a quick or easy read and…
arianvanp · 2014-07-25
I started my 1st year in college doing both math and computer science majors. I really love math but I just hate how (especially calculus and linear algebra courses) they just don't work on growing any intuition at all. in contrast, in my CS major we had a linear algebra class (ugh overlapping classes, huh) as well and we used computer graphics as a case study to learn about the basic concepts which was really fun and enlightening.
Eventually I just ragequit math because I didn't have the patience and time to search for the intuition myself, which is a pitty. I'm really happy I followed the classes about mathematical proofs, groups etc because I really enjoyed those but others were just painful.
Anyhow recently I discovered this blog too up my math concerning computer science is this: http://jeremykun.com/. It's a tad more advanced than this but I'd really recommend it. His blog is freaking amazing and always a joy to read. Math as a sidehobby it is! :)
pneumo · 2014-01-14
My experience is more with applied math (for physics and engineering), which is kind of another world from what mathematicians do. I'm not sure which you would prefer, but if it's the former I recommend checking out the table of contents from Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by Riley, Hobson and Bence(can be viewed on amazon). It has a nice listing of all the topics, mostly in the order you'd want to study them (with a few exceptions). Doubt I'd recommend it as a first book in those subjects for an 11th grader, but it should give you an idea of what's out there.
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering-Compreh… (click to look inside -> table of contents)
The "other world" that I'm much less well read in more involves proofs and foundations, and would probably start with Euclidean Geometry and Set Theory, then topics like Abstract Algebra, Topology, Advanced Calculus, Real and Complex Analysis, Category Theory, and so on.
I'd also recommend j2kun's blog, which I've found great for a first intro to many topics, though it has a bit of a programming focus: http://jeremykun.com/ As mentioned above, Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, EdX and the others are good too, especially since they're free, so you don't have a lot to lose if you get in over your head.
Not sure if this will help, but it can't hurt.
itscrush · 2024-08-14
I've been wondering the same and finding not much. It's hard to find implementations which have technical detail describing the novel problem FHE fixes.
https://www.jeremykun.com/fhe-in-production/ seems worth glancing at, good detail but very few strong examples.
xrd · 2023-05-06
Compare to Google's here:
https://jeremykun.com/2023/02/13/googles-fully-homomorphic-encryption-…
It's a really fun write up. I prefer the syntax of Google's. But Zama is doing great work.
I really enjoyed the podcast with them here. It clarified a lot for me about the intersection of FHE and ZK.
https://zeroknowledge.fm/248-2/
Koshkin · 2021-08-16
I remember enjoying Jeremy's excellent primer on homology:
https://jeremykun.com/2013/04/03/homology-theory-a-primer/
technofire · 2019-02-16
Jeremy Kun, who writes the "Math ∩ Programming" blog,[1] recently published a book, "A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics,"[2] that seems to leverage the conceptual knowledge programmers already have to help them learn serious math. There also are sections in the book on math culture which seems interesting, something I haven't seen elsewhere.
[1] https://jeremykun.com/
[2] https://pimbook.org/
yantrams · 2019-02-08
Here are some relatively lesser known blogs that I can recommend, apart from the usual suspects (worrydream, John Baez etc.)
https://jeremykun.com
http://colah.github.io
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com
https://www.allendowney.com/blog/
And yeah I finally decided to inject some character into my personal website and spent a couple of days wrangling with css and made this --- http://linkdot.link . Not much content really though and it is mostly probability puzzles that I solve every now and then.
Edit: Formatting
tzs · 2018-07-04
Dick Lipton and Ken Regan, for example: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/
Scott Aaronson: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
Jeremy Kun: https://jeremykun.com/
Also, although he's a mathematician rather than a computer scientist, there is Terry Tao: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/
leongrandote · 2018-05-07
At the beginning of this post the given definition of value doesn't seem correct to me, because I think it should be the expected value of the sum of all the rewards from t to infinity and not of R_t, but I could be wrong. Citing D. Silver: The agent's job is to maximise cumulative rewards (highlight cumulative). I would suggest David Silver course for reinforcement learning, http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/d.silver/web/Teaching.html, another interesting post is https://jeremykun.com/tag/bandit-learning/ and the following (5 related post comparing implementations of the algorithms in python).
I know I should not discourage people, but you should read the post Deep reinforcement learning doesn't work yet before drinking all the cool aid: https://www.alexirpan.com/2018/02/14/rl-hard.html
Edited many times.
curryhoward · 2017-11-25
(OP here.) Fair enough—thanks for the thoughtful clarification.
By the way, I'm a big fan of your "Math ∩ Programming" articles. People who found my blog interesting will certainly think the same of yours: https://jeremykun.com/
perryh2 · 2016-10-28
Jeremy Kun's blog, Math ∩ Programming: https://jeremykun.com/
He is _super_ smart and his posts often sneak into the homepage here.
andrewfromx · 2016-02-26
reminds me of this http://jeremykun.com/2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-m… article about doing Math cuz u love it.
alfonsodev · 2016-02-24
I found this blog time ago in Google, searching with terms "mathematics for programmers" I arrived to the article : Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers http://jeremykun.com/2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-m…
Which I'd recommend to read as entry point to this website if you feel intimidated by maths.
Nice to find it again :)
kzrdude · 2015-12-15
It's not clickbait, it just requires reading the article for the full story.
I also recommend this blog post: http://jeremykun.com/2015/11/12/a-quasipolynomial-time-algorithm-for-g…
bengali3 · 2015-04-02
agreed, but you're too early. The current buzzword your looking for to put in your marketing material is 'Machine Learning'. Revisit 'Combinatorial Optimization', possibly combined with 'Cloud' again in a few years.
Edit: hey great post of yours btw. http://jeremykun.com/2014/09/29/hybrid-images/
apu · 2014-04-21
I want to chime in and say that I've found your blog wonderful, and since you're too modest to post a link, let me do it: http://jeremykun.com/
Double_Cast · 2014-03-03
"great" is a superlative. His statement an opinion. But I imagine he knows what he's talking about since he has a PHD in math. [1]
[1] http://jeremykun.com/about/
jjs · 2013-05-17
Maybe a solver for classic Nintendo games?
http://jeremykun.com/2012/03/22/nintendo-np-hard/
(Caveat: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Computers.pdf )
tedkalaw · 2013-05-10
What communities are best for discussing mathematics when learning? As Jeremy describes in another post (http://jeremykun.com/2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-m… it's really difficult to learn math without talking to other people. StackExchange seems alright, but are there other good places to ask questions? Maybe an IRC channel?
llasram · 2013-05-02
Jeremy Kun's "Math ∩ Programming" blog has two great primers on probability theory:
http://jeremykun.com/2013/01/04/probability-theory-a-primer/
http://jeremykun.com/2013/03/28/conditional-partitioned-probability-a-…
His next post in the series is supposed to be on Bayes' theorem.
subset · 2026-03-14
(Disclaimer: I am not a cryptographer and this is a heavily simplified explanation). Homomorphic encryption is built on the foundation of 'hard problems' (e.g. the Learning with Errors Problem) - loosely, computational problems that are thought to be impossible to reverse without being in the possession of a secret key.
The crux of HE is that it provides a _homomorphism_: you map from the space of plaintext to the space of cipher texts, but the mapping preserves arithmetic properties such as addition and multiplication. To be clear - this means that the server can add and multiply the cipher texts, but the plaintext result of that operation is still irreversible without the private key. To the server, it looks like random noise.
I don't think it's helpful to think about this as connected to deep learning or embedding spaces. An excellent resource I'd recommend is Jeremy Kun's guide: https://www.jeremykun.com/2024/05/04/fhe-overview/
Ethan_Barry · 2024-06-11
You got it! By approximate category and in no particular order:
## MISCELLANEOUS
- [Low Tech Magazine](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com), a solar-powered website showcasing the amazing low-tech things you can do with a little ingenuity,
- [Stephen Wolfram's Blog](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com) on math, compsci, and everything else,
- [Cool Macrophotography](https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/Images/Macro/Slime-Moulds-Myxomycete… for amazing pictures of tiny things (WARNING: Time Sink!),
## COMPUTER SCIENCE
- [While-True-Do](https://blog.while-true-do.io) has lots of stuff on Linux administration and self-hosting,
- [Backend Banter](https://www.backendbanter.fm) for a great podcast on backend development,
- [Two Wrongs](https://two-wrongs.com) for statistics and functional programming,
- [Math ∩ Programming](https://www.jeremykun.com/) where math and programming intersect! Written by a Googler...
- [Paul Bourke's site](https://paulbourke.net/) where you can get happily lost exploring old pages on every topic CS touches,
- [Jason Punyon's blog](https://jasonpunyon.com) for some fun algorithms and things,
- [Yossi Kreinin's blog](https://yosefk.com/blog) for C, Python, and plenty of non-technical topics,
- [Adrian Sampson's academic blog](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog) for an academic's perspective,
- [Cool polyhedra viewer project](https://georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html) if you like geometry,
- [Another academic blog on…
mlevental · 2018-12-02
wtf is wrong with hn.
>[sorry if I am being blunt, but it's how I feel]
you should learn to keep your feelings to yourself when the only function they serve is to denigrate others and derive cruel satisfaction for yourself.
>Here is a rule of thumb that in my experience applies well to almost everything in mathematics
this is aspirational pretension - everyone claims to appreciate formal purity /after/ they've learned something but when you're /learning/ none of that matters because you're just trying to develop intuition. to be one of those people that understands after their own stumblings/ruminations and then begrudge the next person the same is despicable. shame on you and i hope you're never in a position where someone depends on you to teach them absolutely anything.
>Imprecise definitions. This defeats the purpose of learning mathematics. Like Leslie Lamport says, rigour in mathematics is not a hurdle or a chore one must endure,
but that's just like your opinion man (or leslie lamport's). there are shelves and shelves of books for people like you - go read bourbaki or rudin or mochizuki or whomever you'd like. this book is not for /you/ - it's stated purpose is to excite and entice people that don't have formal mathematical training to learn mathematics and those sorts of people decidedly don't enjoy austere definitions and succinct theorems and terse proofs.
hence the only purpose your comment serves is to hurt the author's feelings, an author whom i might add…