While I agree with the content of this in general, I find books to be burdensome and would not like a course centered around them. I think a series of well crafted video lectures are a better medium for some people, myself included. I also find that I can learn everything I need to in my Software Engineering program via a series of pointed google searches much quicker than reading a text. Most courses have 1 or more…
In contrast (because people have different learning styles) I get almost nothing out of video lectures, and vastly prefer having books. One of the things holding me back from learning Julia is the current dearth of quality books.
I was just thinking about asking HN about free books that will get me started in phython. This seems to have a quite a few [0]. Has HN read any of these or recommends anything in particular? (I went through learning python the hard way a few years back and have been slacking off) ---------------------------- [0] http://greenteapress.com/wp/
I know you're looking for free but Humble actually has a pretty great python ebook bundle right now, https://www.humblebundle.com/books/python-book-bundle
A lot of people tend to harp on the "textbooks are too expensive" issue, and I think this correctly identifies one of the problems: textbook price is not an issue to many professors. Unfortunately, there's no actual solution to that presented. > If you can’t find one, write one. It’s not that hard. I've used three or four textbooks written by my professor, and I can't say the quality was all that great. Considering t…
> there's no actual solution to that presented
I think you missed this part
> All of our books are available under free licenses that allow readers to copy and distribute the text; they are also free to modify it, which allows them to adapt the book to different needs, and to help develop new material.
For high-level math courses, the best I've seen is a reader written by the professor, combined with an optional 1000 page tome. The reader goes with the lectures, and is focused on the actual material of the course. The reader, combined with your notes, basically covers the lectures. Meanwhile, if you need another take on the material, or some wider context, the 1000 page tome is always there. This works especially w…
To add a different but orthogonal perspective to this: My higher-level math courses were pure mathematics courses, and we pretty much always used Springer textbooks, which were only a few hundred pages long and the size of a normal paperback (i.e., not the size of, say, CLRS). When we didn't use Springer textbooks, we used other textbooks similar in size and length (e.g., [0]). I found these textbooks to be completel…
I've had a similar experience with linguistics. The main textbook I've used was $40, is a bit under 500 pages (but is smaller than a typical textbook, and paperback), and I've used it for 3 classes. That's the kind of book I'm happy to buy. Meanwhile my experience with CS classes has been a > $150 textbook that is never referenced in class, is outdated, and is seemingly on the syllabus just to have something there. I ended up just not bothering with the books even if the syllabus claimed they were required.
"Learning from Data" is a reasonable example of the type of textbook the author is asking for. There is something to be said about the value of "reference" books, however. Maybe reference books shouldn't be used in classes, but there can be great value in a 1000 page book that has a complete discussion of everything you'd expect.
I personally work with one of the authors of this book (Malik). He has mentioned that the book optimizes simplicity and brevity, and that when the authors were writing the book they constrained themselves to an exact number of pages to force themselves to make decisions on what was important or unimportant. Another interesting tactic they employed was an indicator on the page that the reader could skip ahead to anoth…
That is excellent. Do the authors have any articles about their process? Sounds like something that should be replicated in other educational material.
Textbooks have gone off the rails in terms of price (high), information density (low) precisely because the goal is profit and not education.
I was just thinking about asking HN about free books that will get me started in phython. This seems to have a quite a few [0]. Has HN read any of these or recommends anything in particular? (I went through learning python the hard way a few years back and have been slacking off) ---------------------------- [0] http://greenteapress.com/wp/
To add a different but orthogonal perspective to this: My higher-level math courses were pure mathematics courses, and we pretty much always used Springer textbooks, which were only a few hundred pages long and the size of a normal paperback (i.e., not the size of, say, CLRS). When we didn't use Springer textbooks, we used other textbooks similar in size and length (e.g., [0]). I found these textbooks to be completel…
I've had a similar experience with linguistics. The main textbook I've used was $40, is a bit under 500 pages (but is smaller than a typical textbook, and paperback), and I've used it for 3 classes. That's the kind of book I'm happy to buy. Meanwhile my experience with CS classes has been a > $150 textbook that is never referenced in class, is outdated, and is seemingly on the syllabus just to have something there. I…
While I agree with the content of this in general, I find books to be burdensome and would not like a course centered around them. I think a series of well crafted video lectures are a better medium for some people, myself included. I also find that I can learn everything I need to in my Software Engineering program via a series of pointed google searches much quicker than reading a text. Most courses have 1 or more…
> I think a series of well crafted video lectures are a better medium for some people, myself included.
In a traditional course, isn't that what the (physical) lecture is for?