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Books I Recommend

blog.jessfraz.com

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Re: Books I Recommend

#121

Post by byproxy »

cjarrett wrote: post #96
byproxy wrote: post #46

I wish this place was a bit more hospitable to literary fiction.

I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I present these three: J.R. - William Gaddis (1975) (A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g... ) J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady…

Thanks for the recommendations. 'White Noise' definitely resonated during the time I read it. The white noise of anxiety sounded loudly.

Finished 'The Recognitions' a couple of weeks ago and will definitely get into 'J.R.' soon. I hear it's almost all dialog.

Of the Pynchon I've read, I find there's almost a recursive structure to his sentences/paragraphs...paragraph-sentences. Made 'Gravity's Rainbow' a bit of a challenge, for me. Though, 'Inherent Vice' was a bit easier to digest. 'Bleeding Edge' has been on my radar and the themes seem right up my alley, so it'll be read within the next couple of years for sure.

Re: Books I Recommend

#122

Post by cjarrett »

byproxy wrote: post #121
cjarrett wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I present these three: J.R. - William Gaddis (1975) (A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g... ) J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady…

Thanks for the recommendations. 'White Noise' definitely resonated during the time I read it. The white noise of anxiety sounded loudly. Finished 'The Recognitions' a couple of weeks ago and will definitely get into 'J.R.' soon. I hear it's almost all dialog. Of the Pynchon I've read, I find there's almost a recursive structure to his sentences/paragraphs...paragraph-sentences. Made 'Gravity's Rainbow' a bit of a cha…

If you managed to read the Recognitions, J.R. will be a piece of cake and will reward you very well.

Re: Books I Recommend

#123

Post by cjarrett »

ganeumann wrote: post #116
cjarrett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Some other random american novels I find excellent/significant] Crossing to Safety - William Gaddis Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem Latro in the Mist - Gene Wolfe Arcadia (Play) - Tom Stoppard The Last Picture Show & Texasville - Larry McMurtry [Read both] The Blithdale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy ^One of the most interesting novels touching on Southwe…

Good list. Nit: Crossing to Safety is Wallace Stegner

Whoopsies, apparently Gaddis has been on my mind lately!

Re: Books I Recommend

#124

Post by jeff76 »

dkarl wrote: post #112
jeff76 wrote: post #6

I don’t understand why people recommend books like “a programmers introduction to mathematics”. They’re advertised as books for “programmers” or people that know little math, yet they hide solutions from the reader. The reader that doesn’t know proper proofs or deep mathematics likely isn’t the same ones that know if their solutions are correct. Programmers like to write code with test cases. We don’t like to write c…

Seeing a correct proof may or may not help you understand whether your proof is correct. What you're asking for is more like code review, not something you can package with a book.

Disagree. Some proofs are very straightforward and standard. Those are easily checkable with a solution guide.

Re: Books I Recommend

#125

Post by dkarl »

jeff76 wrote: post #124
dkarl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing a correct proof may or may not help you understand whether your proof is correct. What you're asking for is more like code review, not something you can package with a book.

Disagree. Some proofs are very straightforward and standard. Those are easily checkable with a solution guide.

When you hit upon a proof like that, you know it. If you're struggling and need feedback, then your solution is probably more complicated than the elegant one in the book, and the question you're asking is, okay, my solution isn't great, but is it even a solution?

There's a reason these books declare some level of "mathematical maturity" as a prerequisite. By the time you get to certain content you have to either be comfortable checking a proof (maybe set it aside for a few days like you would any other writing) or have human help.

Re: Books I Recommend

#126

Post by throwawaymath »

jihadjihad wrote: post #55
byproxy wrote: post #46

I wish this place was a bit more hospitable to literary fiction.

It can be, depending on the particular thread. I'll speak for myself, but I find it incredibly difficult to read technical/business/pop-nonfic/etc. books in my free time. After a long day programming the last thing I want to do is read the literary equivalent of a TED talk. My bookshelf is a place where the "red dragon" Compilers book can peacefully coexist with Cannery Row--it's just that, more often that not, I rea…

I wish I was like that. I have the opposite problem - I have great difficulty reading fiction, and all the nonfiction I read consists of math textbooks and papers.

I used to love reading novels when I was younger. I read them voraciously. These days I find it incredibly hard to sit down and read novels, even when they're "good".

Re: Books I Recommend

#127

Post by throwawaymath »

qznc wrote: post #111
jeff76 wrote: post #6

I don’t understand why people recommend books like “a programmers introduction to mathematics”. They’re advertised as books for “programmers” or people that know little math, yet they hide solutions from the reader. The reader that doesn’t know proper proofs or deep mathematics likely isn’t the same ones that know if their solutions are correct. Programmers like to write code with test cases. We don’t like to write c…

We do have theorem checker and proof assistants these days. Are there books to learn math with Isabelle or Coq?

Not really, because it's extremely nontrivial to formally verify the proofs of most theorems.

Re: Books I Recommend

#128

Post by metal13 »

ChristianGeek wrote: post #93
tejinderss wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also joined GitHub recently and left in couple of weeks.

Based on her LinkedIn, she seems to be set on short-circuiting her career before it has time to start; 8 years out of school and as many jobs, two for 4 months only and none longer than 17 months. She has some impressive credentials within the Docker/container community, but that’s about it.

That means nothing when it comes to ability. It's also pretty standard these days. You don't move up, you move out.

Re: Books I Recommend

#129

Post by throwawaymath »

jeff76 wrote: post #124
dkarl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing a correct proof may or may not help you understand whether your proof is correct. What you're asking for is more like code review, not something you can package with a book.

Disagree. Some proofs are very straightforward and standard. Those are easily checkable with a solution guide.

Yes, some are straightforward. Most are not. For example, suppose a student shows that T: V --> W is bijective and linear on the way to proving a solution to an exercise. The textbook solution shows dim(V) = dim(W) and T is injective instead. Another student shows that dim(V) = dim(W) and T is surjective, and still another student simply uses the rank-nullity theorem directly

All of these solutions are equivalent (or at least, may be if there are no other mistakes). There are probably other equivalent formulations that I can't immediately think of. But each of these students may see the solution and not realize that they're equivalent. Or worse, they may understand the equivalence of the foregoing statements but make a critical flaw elsewhere in the proof, and still think they have the correct solution.

I'm not arguing against solutions in textbooks. I'm just saying that for most proof-based mathematics they wouldn't be useful as solution checkers.

Re: Books I Recommend

#130

Post by byproxy »

cjarrett wrote: post #122
byproxy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the recommendations. 'White Noise' definitely resonated during the time I read it. The white noise of anxiety sounded loudly. Finished 'The Recognitions' a couple of weeks ago and will definitely get into 'J.R.' soon. I hear it's almost all dialog. Of the Pynchon I've read, I find there's almost a recursive structure to his sentences/paragraphs...paragraph-sentences. Made 'Gravity's Rainbow' a bit of a cha…

If you managed to read the Recognitions, J.R. will be a piece of cake and will reward you very well.

Besides being long, I didn't find "The Recognitions" exceedingly difficult. I was occasionally lost as to which character was speaking/being described, but the characters were mostly distinct enough to reason out. Pynchon's penchant for stringing along train-of-thought can be a bit more challenging. But, I definitely felt some proto-Pynchon vibes with Gaddis' writing.
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