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Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#261

Post by WillAdams »

andrewlgood wrote: post #250
lioeters wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Planiverse: Computer contact with a two-dimensional world - by A.K. Dewdney > A mind-bending, paradigm shifting visit with Yedred, a denizen of the 2 dimensional Universe. It is written so that the physics comes through very easily for those without science training. A university student discovers that this being Yendred is communicating with him through his computer. There begins a lively dialog as both the 2D Y…

I read Magister Ludi or The Glass Bead Game several times in my younger days. I was a Hermann Hesse fan. I echo the recommendation but would add what I found most appealing about it is the idea that all knowledge is related. Once players study for years, they realize mathematics and music theory are related. Architecture and geometry are related. By analogy all knowledge is related and one can glide from one concept…

I really want to see a programming system which has the visual nature which this book projects, and the deep data ties to make it all workable.

That said, these days I mostly just hack at 3D designs using OpenSCAD using either BlockSCAD or the nascent OpenSCAD Graph Editor.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#262

Post by garfieldnate »

I recently finished _An Introduction to Linguistic Typology_, by Viveka Velupillai. It does a great job of summarizing areas of linguistics at the beginning of each chapter, giving readers a good refresh of basic linguistics, followed by extensive examples of the variety of strategies employed by languages across the world. The examples are taken from a truly wide variety of languages, many of which I had never heard of, and there's also extensive discussion of statistical tendencies seen in surveys of a wide swath of languages. The different tendencies found in pidgins/creoles are also treated extensively, and each chapter even has a section on sign languages, which are unfortunately still massively understudied.

Overall it felt like an intro to linguistics course book but on steroids. It was really great for widening my exposure beyond the economically powerful languages that are usually the focus of analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#263

Post by hedoluna »

weinzierl wrote: post #45

Brigham's book on the Fast Fourier Transform was an eye opener for me. Not so much because of the "Fast" part (which is super interesting and useful too) but it was the introduction I needed to make integral transforms and convolution click. And that helped tremendously to connect a whole bunch of other dots.

totally agree

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#264

Post by argggg »

mikehollinger wrote: post #96

Engineer turned engineering leader here. "Good Strategy / Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt - An awesome book on strategy, which explains very plainly how to construct a reasonable strategy, and see signs of bad strategy. It (among other things) dissects NVIDIA's rise in the late 2000's, and predicts (more or less) the next ten years of where the company went. "The Effective Manager" by Mark Horstman - All the things t…

Second "The Effective Manager", that's one of the best management books I have ever read - and one of the very few totally practical ones. It also gave me a significant head start in managerial life because most of the people above me have no idea how to do any of the things clearly laid out in this book.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#265

Post by dkural »

Aidevah wrote: post #132
dkural wrote: post #79

These two books I read recently are real gems / eye openers for me, which changed my view on many things: Robert C. Allen - The Industrial Revolution: A very short introduction (don't be fooled by the book series, every sentence carries its weight). C.S. Lewis - The Discarded Image (we get so many things wrong about what people before us thought and why).

Agreed on The Discarded Image, it really is very good. I've read it together with Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages and they both provide fascinating insights into not just how people lived but more importantly what they thought. Medieval Europe is absolutely fascinating and it's great to be shown around by someone as erudite as Lewis and Huizinga. If you liked The Discarded Image, Lewis's book on courtly love…

I just saw your reply and just wanted to say I really appreciated your book recommendations! Now reading Huizinga :)

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#266

Post by hnhamdani »

dxbydt wrote: post #192
kristiandupont wrote: post #81

I am going to repeat what I always say when these book threads come up: I love all the recommendations here but please say a word or two about why you recommend said books. Sell them to me, don't make me do the work. Dumb lists of titles are so uninteresting.

> why you recommend said books. > Sell them to me ok, i will try. 2 books I absolutely love and have read cover to cover several times, solved most of the 1000+ problems. 1. Inference - Rohatgi 2. Inference - Stapleton Why I recommend them ? The real answer is super long. But the short version is - there are thinkers & there are doers. Basically, the mathematical statistics world has these theory-building Bourbaki ty…

super interesting. that's pretty much align with brute force memorization that's emphasized in many asian countries.

What's your advice in the self-learning prerequisites knowledge/materials before being able to digest those books?

My last math course was calculus I and II back in first year uni 15 years ago as well as stats I and II on my second year (which I completely bamboozled and forgot the material as soon as I barely pass the class).

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#267

Post by themantri »

532nm wrote: post #227

"The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity" by Sanjoy Mahajan. It beautifully treats estimation and problem solving techniques, illustrated by examples from science and engineering. Instead of aiming for a complete, thorough and accurate treatment of problems, its goal is to teach shortcuts to sacrifice some accuracy for much reduced effort. This is a refreshing change to academia where rigo…

I got hold of this book after reading your comment and it's already one of my favourite books.

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#268

Post by Breza »

noud wrote: post #238
dxbydt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why you recommend said books. > Sell them to me ok, i will try. 2 books I absolutely love and have read cover to cover several times, solved most of the 1000+ problems. 1. Inference - Rohatgi 2. Inference - Stapleton Why I recommend them ? The real answer is super long. But the short version is - there are thinkers & there are doers. Basically, the mathematical statistics world has these theory-building Bourbaki ty…

100% agree with this statement. My personal 2ct: first understand how to solve "real" problems, then move on to the abstract theory. I cannot understand the theoretical mathematics behind a concept if I don't have at least one non-trivial example in my head which I understand completely.

I 100% agree with you. I struggled with math through school. I remember wondering what the heck the point of matrices was when I was first learning about them in 10th grade. I got to grad school and I had a professor who explained everything as a problem we were trying to solve and then gave us the tools and then finally the theory. Math went from a constant fight to a fun experience. Now I run the data science department at a corporation (turns out matrices are really important).

Re: Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

#269

Post by Breza »

ipnon wrote: post #191
progbits wrote: post #173

Concrete Mathematics [1], by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik. Wonderfully written (worth buying for the margin jokes alone) and approachable, but dense with information. Great overview of discrete math and algorithm analysis. generatingfunctionology [2] by Wilf is an excellent companion book to Concrete Mathematics, going deeper into generating functions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics [2] https:/…

The only math text that has made me laugh out loud, it’s really that funny. You get more of a feeling of sitting down with the authors in office hours than being emailed a list of theorems for homework. The effect is wonderfully motivating.

That's a great description. If you have a solid understanding of high school math and are willing to put in the effort, this is a book that will reward you.
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