I did not see this up there. I cannot think of a dense was of saying this at the moment, so I’ll go ahead and ramble and hope someone finds it useful.
I am currently slogging through Causality by Pearl. It’s probably a little above my level, but I’m getting most of it. However, just a little bit into the first chapter, he throws in stuff about covariance and regression coefficients that go way over my head. I almost gave up. Fortunately, I recognized them as terms from statistics. I inferred from his rapid coverage of it that it was included as an ‘ooh, shiny!’ moment for people who are already familiar with the terms. So I glazed over it and moved on. So far it hasn’t been a problem, but I’m not terribly far into it either.
So maybe, don’t dwell on stuff that you don’t really need to? Focus on the important stuff?
However, just a little bit into the first chapter, he throws in stuff about covariance and regression coefficients that go way over my head.
M, my usual reflex in situations like that is to pause, look up the terms in question, as well as associated wikipedia pages, and see if I’m missing any basic knowledge; and once I’m more comfortable with those, go back to the more advanced book/article.
This is, of course, more ideal. Sadly, I get most of my books from unrenewable inter-library loans and therefore require an unfortunate focus on speed.
And now that I type this, I realize that nothing stops me from requesting a different edition of it a week or two before my current one is due......
I did not see this up there. I cannot think of a dense was of saying this at the moment, so I’ll go ahead and ramble and hope someone finds it useful.
I am currently slogging through Causality by Pearl. It’s probably a little above my level, but I’m getting most of it. However, just a little bit into the first chapter, he throws in stuff about covariance and regression coefficients that go way over my head. I almost gave up. Fortunately, I recognized them as terms from statistics. I inferred from his rapid coverage of it that it was included as an ‘ooh, shiny!’ moment for people who are already familiar with the terms. So I glazed over it and moved on. So far it hasn’t been a problem, but I’m not terribly far into it either.
So maybe, don’t dwell on stuff that you don’t really need to? Focus on the important stuff?
M, my usual reflex in situations like that is to pause, look up the terms in question, as well as associated wikipedia pages, and see if I’m missing any basic knowledge; and once I’m more comfortable with those, go back to the more advanced book/article.
This is, of course, more ideal. Sadly, I get most of my books from unrenewable inter-library loans and therefore require an unfortunate focus on speed.
And now that I type this, I realize that nothing stops me from requesting a different edition of it a week or two before my current one is due......