Pattern

Just thought about this, super related to Self-Learning.

I aspire to get better at pattern recognition, because a lot of things, with practice, is just about getting better at pattern recognition. This applies in so many domains.

1. Chess
   1. Being able to recognize patterns like incoming forks, discovered checks, smothered mates, this comes with practice.
2. Leetcode / Leetcode / Competitive Programming
   1. You heard of the Leetcode patterns? The 14 design patterns right. Yea, as you practice more and more, the problems you will seem tend to seem more and more similar. It’s just about practice
3. English Essay Analysis
4. Problem-Solving: The more problems you see, the more patterns you recognize.

Someone from a Stanford undergraduate video also talked about how getting better is really just getting better at pattern recognition. Once you start recognizing patterns, things just start becoming much easier. Using Obsidian in some sense is really just helping make patterns more obvious.

Patterns I am recognizing

1. Whether it’s CFR or Bellman Equation for RL, the fundamental idea is to break down something into two parts: the immediate and future expected values. This can then be solved using Dynamic Programming

Working in continuous vs. discrete space: you often tend to solve a version of the problem in the smaller space, whether that’s a discretized space, or in Poker that’s an abstract version of the game.

Pattern Matching is Weak

2023-08-05: I now feel that pattern matching is a weaker form of understanding. What you want to build is strong Reasoning abilities. This realization came from Chester conversation.

The note from Chester:

Intuition > Pattern Matching

I feel like I’ve focused too much on pattern matching. But the reality is, I should probably focus way more on building strong intuition.

This way, you have a much easier time Reasoning. Because Reasoning is a skill that you don’t lose (to an extent that you practice it?). But with Pattern Matching, you lose that with time. Because you forget.

Leetcode aims to help with Reasoning, but it actually helps with Pattern Matching.