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Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#171

Post by rasmi »

gulabjamun wrote: post #38

Can anyone make recommendations for Astrophysics ?

An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie is the Bible, but it is quite large physically and in scope and better serves as a reference for most people.

For various topics, I would look at:

Introduction to Cosmology by Ryden for cosmology at the undergraduate level.

Cosmology by Weinberg.

The Exoplanet Handbook by Perryman.

An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie.

Particle Astrophysics by Perkins.

Modern Statistical Methods for Astronomy by Feigelson.

Statistics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning in Astronomy by Ivezic.

I can post more in other topics if anyone is interested.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#172

Post by exploringBabel »

For advanced Set Theory:

- The Higher Infinite by Kanamori

It's probably more of a monograph than a text book, but it's among the best written monographs I've come across.

For Complex Analysis:

- Visual Complex Analysis by Needham.

It brings a lot of (needed) geometric intuition to a field that is often very easily misunderstood.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#173

Post by wenc »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #98
dplarson wrote: post #39

For numerical optimization, a couple good textbooks are: - "Practical Optimization" by P. E. Gill, W. Murray and M. H. Wright: a little old (1982), but provides a solid foundation - "Convex Optimization" by S. Boyd and L. Vandenberghe: the standard for learning convex optimization (also available as a free PDF from the author's website) - "Convex Analysis and Monotone Operator Theory in Hilbert Spaces" by H. H. Bausc…

What would you recommend for multi-objective non-convex optimization?

Nonconvex optimization doesn't have the same depth of theoretical underpinnings or canonical body of knowledge as convex optimization so I don't imagine there's a textbook on it that would be authoritative. In the universe of optimization, convex optimization is a special case (linear optimization in turn is a special case of convex); non-convex optimization is everything else!

It's kind of like convex optimization is English, and nonconvex optimization is non-English. I'm not sure it's possible to write a text on non-English.

That doesn't non-convex optimization problems are unsolvable, merely that there are many different attacks that aren't necessarily coherently linked. A few common ones include:

a) convex reformulation, where possible.

b) partitioning into convex regions (used in global optimization)

c) heuristic/evolutionary approaches

d) specialized approaches for particular problem structures like integer programs, complementarity problems etc. (there are good textbooks for these)

There are a few good surveys of the landscape however. Most are journal pubs. This text [1] seems to be a good one.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Mixed-Integer-Optimization-...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#174

Post by davidivadavid »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #166
maroonblazer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His framework for how to think about bringing a product to market is what I found most valuable. What's the competitive environment? Who is the customer (in the most specific sense)? How will the product compete against other offerings? How is it priced relative to the competition? How do you talk about the product - i.e. communicate its value? How does one think about growing the market for the product? These are qu…

I'd argue that these fundamental questions are elaborated upon in most contemporary textbooks. In practice, however, young entrepreneurs creating business models around apps need to deal with a whole range of both general and specific issues that need to be addressed and Kotler is of limited use here.

That would also be my criticism of Kotler and Keller. It's good to learn about the marketing lingo, but it doesn't teach you how to do something concrete at a professional level (create a marketing strategy, write persuasive copy, etc.).

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#175

Post by jimijazz »

dx7tnt wrote: post #128
sethhochberg wrote: post #61

Putting my mostly-retired audio engineer hat back on for a minute... The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Dav... This is basically the soundman's bible. Sold for an aspiring live sound engineer, has much more than just advice for live sound guys - covering everything from microphones to acoustics to basic electronics to handy rules of thumb to MIDI, all writ…

"How to have a number one the easy way" by the KLF is the best book imo. Tells you how, and then why you probably shouldn't bother

That was such a fun read!

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#176

Post by agnokapathetic »

brox wrote: post #139
bugmen0t wrote: post #109

In Web Security: - The Tangled Web ( http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/tangled/ ) You can look at the Web Application Hacker's Handbook or the Browser Hacker's Handbook, if you want. But TTW tops them all.

Would like to hear general information security recommendations as well.

The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Preventing Software Vulnerabilities by Mark Dow et al. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321444426/ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321444426/)

This book will give you the fundamentals of application security testing.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#177

Post by hackermailman »

eatonphil wrote: post #147
ekr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also add "ML for the working programmer", which is, perhaps surprisingly, more about functional programming than the particularities of ML. In any case, it is a great book.

It is one of the only accessible texts on Standard ML, I'll give it that... But it goes neither deep nor wide in content. I did not find it very useful.

Some other texts w/SML:

The Little MLer: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTML/ which you can read with the revised Programming in SML http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/isml/book.pdf

Discrete Math & Functional Programming: https://cs.wheaton.edu/~tvandrun/dmfp/

Parallel & Sequential Algorithms uses SPARC which is similar to SML for examples in the book http://www.parallel-algorithms-book.com/

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#179

Post by Tepix »

superasn wrote: post #48

Perl cookbook by Nathan Torkington and Tom Christiansen. It taught me everything from Unix tricks to CGI to making my first website. No fluff, just lots and lots of code useful practical code samples.

When looking for the best Perl book, I liked "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant better. Just a fantastic book that is both fun to read and authorative yet still suitable for learning Perl from scratch (for certain readers).
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