What I’m learning

A running log of ML research I've been thinking about — papers I'm reading, ideas I'm turning over. Every entry is a live notebook.

2026

1. May 04 PAPER

   Influence functions: where does the Hessian come from?

   A derivation of the Koh & Liang (2017) influence function from the implicit function theorem, verified numerically on a small MLP.

2. Apr 24 ML

   Forward, backward, and hooks in PyTorch

   What actually happens when you call .backward(), and how register_forward_hook / register_full_backward_hook let you capture per-layer (a, δ) factors.

Adding a new entry

Add YAML front-matter to any content page with kb_date, kb_tag, kb_title, and kb_desc fields. The timeline above is auto-generated at build time from all pages that declare these fields — no need to edit this file.

Example front-matter:

---
kb_date: "2026-05-04"
kb_tag: paper
kb_title: "My new page"
kb_desc: "A short description for the timeline card."
---

Tag values: ai, ml, maths, paper, note.