Adam Boult

Projects

ArtificialEconomist.com. Ask an artificial economist any question.

Economoose.com. Explore economic data.

YetiPredict.com. Track your own predictions, privately or publicly, to check you are on track and are planning accurately.

Notes

Mathematics

• Logic, the natural numbers and computability (pdf)
• Algebra including linear algebra (pdf)
• Real analysis, variational calculus and functionals (pdf)
• Complex analysis (pdf)
• Abstract algebra (pdf)
• Analytic geometry and Euclidian space (pdf)
• Topology (pdf)

Basic physics

• Newtonian gravity and electrostatics (pdf)
• Special relativity, electromagnetism and general relativity (pdf)
• Rigid body physics (pdf)

Computer science

• Computer science, integer RISC instructions (RV64I) and building a hex and macro assembler (pdf)
• Simple algorithms with integer addition and subtraction and arrays, decision problems, other problems, lossless compression (pdf)
• Algorithms for integer multiplication and division, and floating point arithmetic (pdf)
• Freestanding C, and building a C compiler in assembly then C (pdf)
• Data structures and algorithms (pdf)

Statistics

• Univariate probability (pdf)
• Multivariate probability (pdf)
• Multivariate discriminative probability including machine learning (pdf)
• Fully-connected neural networks (pdf)
• Univariate time series (pdf)
• Multivariate time series (pdf)
• Multivariate probability inference (pdf)
• Probabilistic Turing machines and algorithms, and encryption (pdf)

Science and engineering

• Statistical mechanics (pdf)
• Quantum mechanics and quantum computing (pdf)
• Chemistry and geology (pdf)
• Biology (pdf)
• Engineering (pdf)
• Electronics (pdf)
• Pre-computer electronics for finite state machines including making a calculator: boot ROMs/firmware (mask ROM/diode matrix), punch cards, memory mapped IO for LEDs and keyboards and volatile RAM (SRAM and DRAM) (eg rom for e and pi in calculator, (could have big page on sequential/combinatorial logic before, and could introduce some of these here) (pdf)

Computers

• Manufacturing RV64I CPUs (pdf)
• Micro-architecture including cache, prefetching, instruction pipelines, branch prediction, out-of-order execution and speculative execution (pdf)
• Control additions (RV64I_Zicsr_Zifencei) integer multiplication and division (RV64IM_Zicsr_Zifencei), Floating Point Units (FPUs) (RV64IMFDQ_Zicsr_Zifencei), Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) (RV64IMFDQV_Zicsr_Zifencei) and Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) (pdf)
• Other Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) and Complex Instruction Set Computers (CISC) (pdf)
• 2D graphics (pdf)
• Non-volatile editable memory: bootloaders and computer storage including magnetic memory (magnetic core memory, magnetic tape, floppy disks, hard drives), Semiconductor memory incuding SSD (EPROM/EEPROM/flash memory), optical memory (CD/DVD etc), Master Boot Record (MBR) and FAT32 (pdf)
• Networks (pdf)
• Audio (pdf)
• 3D graphics (pdf)
• Multithreading and multi-core CPUs (RV64IMFDQVA_Zicsr_Zifencei aka RV64GQV) (pdf)
• Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) (pdf)

Operating systems

• RV64GQV_S, dynamic libraries, Memory Mapping Units (MMUs), Address Generation Units (AGUs), protection rings, CPU interrupts and GNU/Linux/Systemd (pdf)
• Hosted C and compiling C code with Linux (pdf)
• Securing the system and boot process: Including encrypting systems, Logical Volume Management (LVM), trusted execution environment, secure enclave, Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, Intel Management Engine (ME) and AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP) (pdf)
• Networks on Linux (pdf)
• Audio and video output in Linux, and sandboxing applications (pdf)
• Serialisation, single-node databases, Structured Query Language (SQL) and Extract-Transform-Load/Extract-Load-Transform (pdf)

Other languages which compile to machine code with dynamic or static libraries/runtime libraries

• Other imperative languages: Fortran, Algol, Pascal (pdf)
• C++, objects, generic programming, functional programming and clang/LLVM, and transpilers (pdf)
• Other C-family languages: Rust, Zig (pdf)

Other languages which compile to machine code with embedded or external runtime systems

• Scheme and Common Lisp (compiled natively), and dynamic typing (pdf)
• Functional languages: Meta Language (ML), Caml, OCaml and Haskell (pdf)
• Other compiled languages with runtime systems: Objective-C, Nim, Forth, COBOL, Smalltalk and Simula (pdf)
• Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and actor model concurrent languages: Swift, Go (pdf)
• C#, F#, VB.NET and mono (pdf)

Languages which compile to machine code for process virtual machines

• Java, garbage collection, process virtual machines and Kotlin (pdf)
• Other Lisp-family languages, and compiling them to VM: Racket, Clojure and Scala (pdf)
• Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and actor model concurrent languages with virual machines: The BEAM VM and Erlang, Elixer, Dart (other concurrency model?) (pdf)

Interpreted languages

• Other interpreted languages: Lua, Perl, Ruby, Julia, Octave, PHP and FreeBASIC (pdf)

Web development and JavaScript

• HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the World Wide Web (WWW) (pdf)
• JavaScript, Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation and WebAssembly (Wasm) (pdf)
• Server-side javascript and javascript frameworks and libraries (pdf)

Python (Virtual machine and interpreter)

• Python (pdf)
• Python: Data (pdf)
• Python: Internet packages (pdf)

Domain specific languages

• R (pdf)
• Specific packages for R (pdf)
• Validating code and compilers: Coq (ocaml), compcert, hol (ocaml), isabelle, agda (haskell) (pdf)
• Logical programming languages including ada and prolog (pdf)

Applications

• Reverse engineering hardware, backing up ROMs, hardware emulation including use of JIT and dynamic recompilers, and emulation of retro video game systems (pdf)
• Reverse engineering software (pdf)

Applied statistics

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) of just text, including transformers and Large Language Models (LLMs) (pdf)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) with text and audio (pdf)
• Computer vision (pdf)
• Working with specific datasets, and models including Llama and Stable Diffusion (pdf)

More on Linux

• Specific Linux distributions, system virtual machines, RV64GQVH_S, hardware-assisted virtualisation and OS-level virtualisation with Docker (pdf)
• Distributed computing (pdf)
• Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) (pdf)
• Android (pdf)

Other operating systems

• Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) and other non-multitasking operating systems including ZX BASIC, Classic MacOS, PC88, PC98, MSX, Machine Operating System for BBC Micro, Commadore 64 (pdf)
• FreeBSD and OpenBSD (pdf)
• Windows 3.x, Windows 9x and Windows NT (pdf)
• macOS and iOS (pdf)

Economics

• Decision and game theory (pdf)
• General equilibrium (pdf)
• Accounting (pdf)
• Industrial organisation (pdf)
• Money, banking and finance and international trade (pdf)
• Microeconomics including information asymmetry, labour markets, externalities, public goods and subscription-based services (pdf)
• Business (pdf)
• Macroeconomics (pdf)
• Public choice and government production of goods (pdf)
• Cryptocurrencies (pdf)
• Specific legislation and regulation (pdf)
• Languages and packages for economics: Dynare for Octave, QuantEcon for Python/Julia, NetLogo; Mesa for Python (pdf)

Philosophy

• History (pdf)
• Epistemology and ontology (pdf)
• Political science and philosophy (pdf)