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There is! Start with a textbook. Most books (and practically all good ones) will include a preface or note from the author at the front saying “we wrote this with the intent of being accessible to people who know XYZ.” The best even say “if you don’t know that, we refer you to these books for those prereqs.” It’s a fantastic set of resources, but people seem to always want to consume a million blog posts instead of a couple books!

Textbooks will get you foundations, and then for more up to date stuff, you need to read academic papers. Start with survey papers and literature reviews on your topic, and when you can’t find one, start with any old (new) paper on the topic and read the related work section (all papers have them). You’ll have to learn to distinguish the “we’re building off of XYZ” from “ABC is kind of like our stuff,” because XYZ is the ‘prereq’ work. Then just go recursively until you hit stuff you understand from the textbook foundations.

Most academic resources contain pointers to their prereqs, so use them!

If you specifically want pointers where to start, this is my field so I’d be happy to point you to a path if you like.



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