Yes. They were doing 4 years of math intensive undergrad and 5+ years of math intensive post-grad work before there even was an advent of deep learning in 2008-2012.
So they were doing deep learning as an undergrad, huh? Studying tensors for 10 years? Next you’ll be telling me they have 20 years experience coding for CUDA.
No. None of these people have the math background you think, nor do you need it.
I don’t want to belabor this point (but apparently I do, since I’m replying to my own post 2 hours later), but your idea of going back and counting undergraduate work — when it isn’t even related — is simply padding for padding sake. Why stop there? Why not 4 years of high school, too? Aren’t they prerequisites? I mean you can go back all the way to preschool, since counting is a prerequisite to math, and hell, is a whole section of discrete math. But you don’t, because claiming you need 25 years of mathematical training sounds ludicrous.
