About that 'tutorial'...

One thing I didn’t make clear regarding my last post: I am not especially satisfied with the way the “tutorial” was turning out. I use scare quotes here because I think it resembles a reference manual more than a tutorial. Nonetheless I think there are some sections that are quite good; and a document like it probably ought to exist. So I figured I’d post it anyhow and I can mine it for material later. I intend to start afresh however with something that dives at the core ideas, which I think are relatively simple.