My Top Answers on Quora

In this post, I would like to provide an overview of my best answers given on Quora, one of the most popular Q&A websites in English. I've collected the top answers according to vote counts as well as my own preference and folded them into four high-level topics. Enjoy!

Russia

1) Q: What are some of the most epic photos ever taken?

Raising the Banner of Victory (9th May, 1945).

2) Q: Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

For any Soviet-born person (for me too), this question is familiar and painful. Therefore, my answer amalgamates logical conclusions with rather subjective opinions.

3) Q: If I wanted to learn about Russia, what would be the best books to read? 

The answer is mainly about immortal masterpieces in Russian literature from 19th and 20th centuries and authoritative historical studies.

4) Q: Is Jack London still popular in Russia?

Just kidding :)

Culture

1) Q: Is the movie Inception original?

The background of the answer is as follows. Some time ago, I was fond of V. Nabokov's legacy, including his literary analysis works. Then, I found his foreword to a novel "A Hero of Our Time", where Nabokov dissects a poem "Dream" (1841) by Mikhail Lermontov, a greatest Russian poet. In this poem, the concept of layered dreams was clearly introduced. For the first time? Perhaps, not. If you are aware of some earlier prototypes, please comment below. Though, that's curious that the key idea of the complex plot of a contemporary blockbuster could be invented much earlier before that by a 19th century Russian poet. Anyway, Cristopher Nolan's movie is extremely amusing and watchable.

2) Q: What is the most influential (not the best, or most popular, but most influential) rock band?

While it's hardly a matter to argue with people who mention the Velvet Undeground (RIP Lou Reed), to my mind, Pixies were a good try!

3) Q: What are the best mindfuck (mind bending) films?

A. Tarkovsky's Solaris, in any sense.

Computers & Programming

1) Q: What are some reasons to completely switch to Linux?

Here are some reasons. All right, I used to be an Ubuntu user;)

2) Q: What is the purpose of the volatile keyword in java?

All the credit for this answer goes to an excellent book "Java Concurrency in Practice".

Machine Learning

1) Q: Machine Learning: What are the prerequisites in Maths to Master Machine Learning?

My answer covers two reliable sources: the list of Bradford Cross, a co-founder of Prismatic, along with the list of Michael Jordan from UC Berkeley (no, not a basketball player). These books can give anyone an excellent foundation for learning this demanding area of research.

2) Q: I know the basics of machine learning. Can you point me to a video lecture that explains "deep learning"?

The answer is based on my personal experience, since I took this great course of a machine learning star Geoffrey Hinton (many thanks to him, his TAs and Coursera).

3) Q: What is contrastive divergence?

My answer refers to Oliver Woodford's explanation of this algorithm invented by Geoffrey Hinton. Interestingly, the answer neighbors with the one (and better one!) given by Yoshua Bengio, a machine learning pundit and deep learning guru, who is, luckily, very productive not only in the research, but also on Quora. His account is worth following, without question.

4) Q: Are there any interesting applications of Machine Learning Algorithms on Q&A sites like Quora and Stack Overflow?

No surprise that my answer describes our research lab's project iCQA.

5) Q: How can I use SVM  to classify documents?

The answer is simple. Follow Thorsten Joachims!

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That's all. There is the full list of my answers on Quora.

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