> This book, however, requires the reader to have some knowledge of probability theory and linear algebra.
This is so funny to me, I see it often and I'm always like "yea, right, some knowledge"... these statements always need to be taken with a grain of salt and an understanding that math nerds wrote them. Average programmers with average math skills (like me) beware ;)
This usually means that average CS or EE university level students should be able to easily follow it even if they have never touched the topic. It's far below the level of math and physics degrees, but still somewhat above what you could expect from an average self taught programmer.
I'm not even self-taught, it's just that when I was studying (CS degree, like 15 years ago) we did have a mandatory linear algebra course, graph theory course, statistics course etc., but we never * actually * used any of that in practice, it was all algo this, big o that, data structures, design patterns, languages, compilers, SQL etc. Now that I'm thinking about it pretty much the only course we had to use some linear algebra in was the 3d rendering one. ...
And then you work on .net/java/sql/server crap for a decade and you forget even the little math you used to know :D
This is so funny to me, I see it often and I'm always like "yea, right, some knowledge"... these statements always need to be taken with a grain of salt and an understanding that math nerds wrote them. Average programmers with average math skills (like me) beware ;)