The Matrix Cookbook was one of the most useful texts I had in the late 2000s during my PhD for computing update rules for loss functions. With autograd now widely employed, I don't think it is as fundamental as it was.
Given that, what additional value is The Tensor Cookbook providing such that it is worth learning an entirely new notation (for me)? It would probably require long term usage to really benefit from these visual depictions.
The Matrix Cookbook has a lot of useful formulas, but they don't have much explanation.
In the Tensor Cookbook I aim to show the same formulas using tensor diagrams, in a way that (hopefully) make them seem so obvious you don't even need the book afterwards.
That's a good point regarding the Matrix Cookbook. I didn't start using it until I'd already learned a lot of linear algebra and how to do matrix calculus by hand, so I didn't really need much of an explanation when I first discovered it in the 2000s.
In contrast, the Tensor Cookbook was my first introduction to tensor diagrams, so I didn't have any prior experience with them to lean on.
It certainly looks like a useful and powerful technique, but it seems like something that warrants almost a crash course in the topic with some exercises rather than just jumping in.
> It certainly looks like a useful and powerful technique, but it seems like something that warrants almost a crash course in the topic with some exercises rather than just jumping in.
I guess my personal crash course was writing a book on the topic. And a software library... Ironically this makes it harder for me to appreciate the level of explanation needed for others.
Thus I rely on people like you to tell me where the chain jumps off, so I can expand the sections. Please let me know what sections were too quickly skipped through!
Given that, what additional value is The Tensor Cookbook providing such that it is worth learning an entirely new notation (for me)? It would probably require long term usage to really benefit from these visual depictions.