u/Huge_Effort_6317

title

This is the first subject I've ever gotten genuinely excited about enough to want to go deep on my own (outside of coursework). It started when I read about how LLMs convert text into vectors — the whole idea that meaning can be represented as points in some high-dimensional space just clicked for me and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

The problem is I don't really know how to structure this kind of self-directed learning. I don't want to just skim blog posts and feel like I "get it" without actually understanding the mechanics.

For anyone who's gone down this road — how did you approach learning embeddings properly? Some things I'd love guidance on:

* What's the right order to learn this in — should I start with classical stuff (word2vec, GloVe) before jumping to transformer-based embeddings, or is that a waste of time now? * Is there real value in implementing something like word2vec from scratch, or is that a distraction from understanding modern embeddings? * Any papers, courses, or books you'd consider essential (not just "read the transformer paper" — I mean the actual sequence that made it click for you)? * How much linear algebra/math background do I need before this stops feeling like magic and starts feeling like something I could reason about?

I'm a CS student, comfortable with programming, so I don't need "intro to coding" — more looking for a roadmap from someone who's actually built intuition here. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I USED CLAUDE TO CLEAN MY THOUGHTS AND STRUCTURE THEM

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Hey everyone,

I'm a second-year BTech CSE student and I've been seriously considering the ISI Kolkata MMath program as a long-term goal (2–3 years out). I wanted to post here because I genuinely don't have anywhere else to ask.

The honest situation: I study in an environment where basically nobody around me cares about math beyond passing exams. My classmates are focused on placements, competitive programming, or web dev — all valid, just not what pulls me. I don't have a mentor or even a single peer I can talk to about real mathematics. Most of what I'm doing is completely self-directed, which means I have no way of knowing if I'm actually understanding things correctly or just fooling myself.

That second part is what gets to me the most. When you're studying alone with zero feedback, there's this constant background anxiety of "am I even doing this right?" I can work through a proof and have no idea if my reasoning is actually valid or just superficially plausible.

My math background is standard engineering curriculum — calculus, linear algebra, a bit of discrete math. Nothing proof-based.

A few things I'd really like to know:

1. **Is it realistic for a CSE student with no formal proof background to crack MMath in 2–3 years of self-study?** Honest answers only.

2. **How do you even know if you're making real progress** when there's no one to check your work or push back on your reasoning?

3. **What's the right sequence of topics to build toward the entrance exam?**

4. **Any non-math-major success stories?** Even partial ones would help.

Thanks in advance. This community might be the closest thing I have to people who get it.

I used AI to articulate my points