27 Equations Every Data Scientist Needs to Know
Author(s): Julia
Originally published on Towards AI.
This member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium.
Everybody’s talking about AI, but how many of those who claim to be “experts” can actually break down the math behind it? It’s easy to get lost in the buzzwords and headlines, but the truth is — without a solid understanding of the equations and theories driving these technologies, you’re only skimming the surface. Think you can just rely on the tools and libraries available today? Think again. If you want to truly innovate and stay ahead of the curve, you need to master the math that powers AI and data science. In this article, we’ll dive deep into the fundamental concepts that most people ignore — and why they’re absolutely crucial for anyone serious about working in AI.
Gradient Descent is a fundamental optimization algorithm used in machine learning to minimize a function by iteratively moving in the direction of steepest descent. It’s particularly useful in training models with large datasets, as it efficiently finds the minimum of a cost function. The algorithm updates parameters in the opposite direction of the gradient of the function at the current point, with the size of the step… Read the full blog for free on Medium.
Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor.
Published via Towards AI
Take our 90+ lesson From Beginner to Advanced LLM Developer Certification: From choosing a project to deploying a working product this is the most comprehensive and practical LLM course out there!
Towards AI has published Building LLMs for Production—our 470+ page guide to mastering LLMs with practical projects and expert insights!

Discover Your Dream AI Career at Towards AI Jobs
Towards AI has built a jobs board tailored specifically to Machine Learning and Data Science Jobs and Skills. Our software searches for live AI jobs each hour, labels and categorises them and makes them easily searchable. Explore over 40,000 live jobs today with Towards AI Jobs!
Note: Content contains the views of the contributing authors and not Towards AI.