Stephen Downes

Tom Yeh posted this as a note this week, but it's worth going back to the article from last year to see the full explanation. He writes, "My son is about to learn cosine in high school trig. He probably will roll his eyes and think: 'what a waste of time.' I made this walkthrough by hand to tell him that cosine is what powers vector databases." When I studied trig I was into electronics so I knew it was useful. But my education never ever included vectors and arrays, so it feels a bit like a lost art to me. I'm better now.