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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?

#221

Post by drekipus »

cercatrova wrote: post #134
_qua wrote: post #120

The Selfish Gene should be read by everyone who studies biology or life science. Modern biological sciences are underlied by an understanding of evolution an genetics. I had heard variants of the phrase "change in allele frequency in a population over time," as a description of evolution many times starting in high school. But it wasn't until I read The Selfish Gene in college that I really understood what this meant…

Indeed. We are only vessels for our genes, what we do doesn't really matter as long as we pass our genes along, from the perspective of our genes. I would also recommend other Dawkins books such as The God Delusion, it was one of the pivotal books that turned me from someone vaguely religious to an atheist. It explains simply how the various fallacies of religions are explainable and unwrappable.

>The God Delusion, it was one of the pivotal books that turned me from someone vaguely religious to an atheist.

I think this only sells it to other people who are vaguely religious and are looking to be atheist.

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

#222

Post by ManuelKiessling »

„The Dream Machine“ by M. Mitchell Waldrop.

It had such a profound effect on me wrt my profession and passion — nearly as if I had grown up without a family, and then one day, the family knocks on my door, and I became whole.

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

#223

Post by llaolleh »

dxbydt wrote: post #212
shanusmagnus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you laid this out as a tension between two worldviews. I'm curious: as a seeming master of the "bag of tricks" worldview, do you feel like having fully absorbed so many "tricks" has given you a kind of empirical insight into things? In other words: have the tricks, when crashed against the real world over and over like you describe, oozed into something akin to a larger theoretical sense of things? Or do t…

i will unfortunately give you a half-assed response. Because the truth will take up a lot of time & space & is very inflammatory. So here's what I honestly believe - there are only isolated tricks. The ones who sit in judgement of us, like savants, and claim some sort of coalesced mastery of these tricks into some larger theoretical construct, are faking. They are good at faking, so we listen to them. They have bette…

:).

Someone once wrote this. If someone gives you Excalibur, you don't fucking ask where it came from, who made it, etc. Just go use it and have fun.

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

#224

Post by lzralbu »

boppo1 wrote: post #53
erdos4d wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maths: Rudin's Real and Complex analysis. Yes!! Rudin kills it, but you need a year or two to get through this gem. A course in university will go too fast for sure.

I often hear Rudin is too challenging to be an introduction to analysis. You need to be very comfortable with relevant proofs already. Then what's so good about it? I'm not doubting it's great because I do hear it lauded, but it's hard to imagine. It is just a collection of mathematical obscurities for super-nerds? I've been ever-so-slowly self teaching higher maths. Right now halfway through Hammond's book of proof…

Which book do you mean when you say "Polya 1"?

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

#225

Post by fuzzmuzzy »

charlieflowers wrote: post #71
fuzzmuzzy wrote: post #18

The Jazz Theory book - Mark Levine High Performance Browser Networking - edit: Ilya Grigorik Effortless Mastery - Kenny werner

Do you think non-musicians could benefit from Effortless Mastery?

I think so but perhaps more general mindfulness resources may be better places to start

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

#226

Post by fuzzmuzzy »

dietketchup wrote: post #65
fuzzmuzzy wrote: post #18

The Jazz Theory book - Mark Levine High Performance Browser Networking - edit: Ilya Grigorik Effortless Mastery - Kenny werner

Wow, never expected The Jazz Theory Book or Effortless Mastery to show up on HN. I'll add The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine and Jamey Abersold vol. 1 How To Play Jazz and Improvise

Also excellent resources

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

#227

Post by 532nm »

"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 rigor is often pursued at all cost. But in the real world rigor rarely matter, and simplifications are almost always worthwhile, especially initially since we can always refine models if required.

I first read it as an undergraduate and use the estimation and problem solving techniques from it almost daily. Though well hidden, the pdf is available for free on the website of the publisher.

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

#228

Post by DerSaidin »

dxbydt wrote: post #212
shanusmagnus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you laid this out as a tension between two worldviews. I'm curious: as a seeming master of the "bag of tricks" worldview, do you feel like having fully absorbed so many "tricks" has given you a kind of empirical insight into things? In other words: have the tricks, when crashed against the real world over and over like you describe, oozed into something akin to a larger theoretical sense of things? Or do t…

i will unfortunately give you a half-assed response. Because the truth will take up a lot of time & space & is very inflammatory. So here's what I honestly believe - there are only isolated tricks. The ones who sit in judgement of us, like savants, and claim some sort of coalesced mastery of these tricks into some larger theoretical construct, are faking. They are good at faking, so we listen to them. They have bette…

What about creating/finding tricks? I wonder if there a larger theoretical sense of things involved there? What about in a weaker sense, like: "I think I'll start my trial-and-error with this"?

(a mostly-hypothetical question)

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

#229

Post by boppo1 »

lzralbu wrote: post #224
boppo1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear Rudin is too challenging to be an introduction to analysis. You need to be very comfortable with relevant proofs already. Then what's so good about it? I'm not doubting it's great because I do hear it lauded, but it's hard to imagine. It is just a collection of mathematical obscurities for super-nerds? I've been ever-so-slowly self teaching higher maths. Right now halfway through Hammond's book of proof…

Which book do you mean when you say "Polya 1"?

How to solve it

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

#230

Post by boppo1 »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #113
boppo1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear Rudin is too challenging to be an introduction to analysis. You need to be very comfortable with relevant proofs already. Then what's so good about it? I'm not doubting it's great because I do hear it lauded, but it's hard to imagine. It is just a collection of mathematical obscurities for super-nerds? I've been ever-so-slowly self teaching higher maths. Right now halfway through Hammond's book of proof…

It’s true that most people will probably drown if you throw them into Rudin first thing (although I’ve known a couple who held their breath, swam the whole length, jumped out and asked for more). The thing is, “analysis” in (English) mathematical vernacular covers a lot more than were dreamt of in Newton’s philosophy, and that in turn is a lot more than is habitually included in a course entitled “calculus”. On the o…

thank you for effort-posting. The map of mathematics in my head is a bit broader now.
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