How can we understand closeness without measuring distance?
How can we understand closeness without measuring distance?
Imagine you're at a park with scattered benches. You want to find a bench that's not too far from your current spot.
Think of the park as a space where you can group benches based on how close they are to each other, without needing to measure the exact distance. This grouping is what mathematicians call a "topology."
Example
You group benches that are within 10 meters of each other as "close enough," even though the park is vast.
Remember this
A topology groups elements based on closeness, not distance.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Closed set
A closed set contains all its boundary points
Riemannian manifold
Riemannian manifolds generalize Euclidean space concepts like distance and curvature
GraphSAGE does: samples and aggregates a fixed-size neighborhood
GraphSAGE samples and aggregates a fixed-size neighborhood
Inner product space
Inner product space generalizes Euclidean geometry
Manifold
A manifold locally resembles R^n
Euclidean geometry
Euclidean distance measures absolute position in space
Swipe through 100 ML concepts daily
Open Pocket Polymath