In terms of practical understanding, the author advises implementing a basic picoGPT/Llama/Mistral model from scratch in python & numpy after reading the theory. The author emphasizes the importance of having a strong foundation in math, particularly in matrix-vector multiplications, dot products, and linear algebra.
Key takeaways:
- Start learning about neural networks with any book on traditional neural networks to understand the basics like activation function and backpropagation.
- After understanding the basics, further learning can be done through numpy user manual, a book about pytorch, a book about transformers, and a book from Wolfram about LLMs.
- Practical understanding can be achieved by implementing a basic picoGPT/Llama/Mistral model from scratch in python & numpy.
- Having a good understanding of matrix-vector multiplications, dot products and linear algebra in general is a must.