Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers (2013)

This looks amazing and I will definitely read it. As an aside, does this line bother anyone else? > programming from a computation/understanding-first, mathematics-second point of view Mathematics is understanding. What's implicit? The suggestion that mathematics isn't understanding, it's just funny symbols that no one understands. > The latter path is much more useful, as it denies the necessity of mathematical intervention at each step, that is, we remove often-intractable mathematical analysis as a prerequisite…

I worked my way through the book a month ago. It's very practical and understandable. The ipython notebook format makes it extremely easy to play with the code without worrying about any setup at all. And having it on github made it extremely easy to fix and clarify things as I went.

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6351681 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6102782.

The "understanding-first" approach is so right, especially with a topic like Bayesian methods where the logic makes _so much sense_, and yet is so easy to miss by brute-force memorization of equations. IPython notebook is a great choice. I've only skimmed the first couple of chapters but cloned and will definitely spend some time with this. This seems inspired by the awesome Yudkowsky article that comes from a similar (introductory, not programming-specific) place: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes/ For anyone…