Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
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4.5.9
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
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Joined November 06, 2022
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
6d ago
@ZachWeinersmith @lavi
I think standard textbooks like Strang focus too much on row reduction as a building block and too little on the idea of a matrix as a transformation of space (which is the most intuitive starting point for me).
I don't know of any textbook that does that but (if you'll forgive the plug) I wrote a long-from exploration of PCA that takes that perspective and touches on most aspects of concrete linear algebra
https://peterbloem.nl/publications/unraveling-pca
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
6d ago
@ZachWeinersmith If you want to read one cover to cover I can recommend https://linear.axler.net/
It also depends a bit on what you want to get out of it. Axler is good to get the more abstract perspective on linear algebra.
If you just want a concrete understanding of what an SVD does to a grid of numbers, it's probably not the best one.
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Apr 08, 2026
A rare misfire from Tufekci, I'd say. She's usually on the money.
While the algorithm is always the same, AI is operating in substantially different modes when it's hallucinating to when it's retrieving factual information.
Hallucination is not a solved problem, but it's reducing substantially and because concrete innovations, not just "more data, more compute".
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Apr 06, 2026
@fesshole
And under hobbies they listed unicycling. That's a very inefficient mode of transport! Totally unqualified.
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Mar 01, 2026
I have a horrible sinking feeling that the aftermath of the Iran strikes is going to be the first "but AI said" of international geopolitics.
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Feb 14, 2026
Explaining the fediverse is simple. It's social media for people who hate social media.
There aren't that many people on it? Feature.
It's not that addictive or even engaging? Feature.
You can't make money on it and it won't help your career? Feature.
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Oct 14, 2024
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Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
Peter Bloem
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
sigmoid.social
@pbloem@sigmoid.social
·
Apr 16, 2023
I wrote a blog post. It's about my previous life as an interaction designer.
There are some lessons we as academics can learn from designers, and they run a lot deeper than just how to make things look a little prettier.
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