Chapter 4. Basic Mathematics
It's time to start looking at some basic mathematic principles that are handy when dealing with data science. The word math tends to strike fear in the hearts of many, but I aim to make this as enjoyable as possible. In this chapter, we will go over the basics of the following topics:
- Basic symbols/terminology
- Logarithms/exponents
- The set theory
- Calculus
- Matrix (linear) algebra
We will also cover other fields of mathematics. Moreover, we will see how to apply each of these to various aspects of data science as well as other scientific endeavors.
Recall that, in a previous chapter, we identified math as being one of the three key components of data science. In this chapter, I will introduce concepts that will become important later on in this book—when looking at probabilistic and statistical models—and I will also be looking at concepts that will be useful in this chapter. Regardless of this, all of the concepts in this chapter should be...
