Math Probability Zero to Hero: Essential Concepts to Understand Large Language Models
Table of Contents Introduction Probability Fundamentals Conditional Probability and the Chain Rule Probability Distributions How LLMs Use Probability From Theory to Practice Common Misconceptions Conclusion Resources Introduction If you’ve ever wondered how ChatGPT, Claude, or other large language models generate coherent text that seems almost human-like, the answer lies in mathematics—specifically, probability theory. While the internal mechanics of these models involve complex neural networks and billions of parameters, at their core, they operate on a surprisingly elegant principle: predicting the next word by calculating probabilities. ...