Ask HN: Which books in your field do you think are perfect for self study?

Richard Hamming’s “Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics” is a wonderful introduction to calculus from one of those rare individuals who mastered the interplay between applications of mathematics and its theory. It’s packed with insights from a true veteran. He aims to teach you to view and interact with mathematics as a living, breathing, occasionally messy but beautiful thing; and in my opinion he manages to do so with a rare humanity.

He was one of the gems of mathematical exposition. If you’ve studied any information theory you probably know his surname well. His other books are also excellent.

It begins with a lovely quotation: “every scientist owes a labour of love to his field”. His work embodies that. There are lots of exercises, and it includes answers to enough of them for you to check you’re on the right track.

iciac · 4 years ago

Equally "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Hamming is one of the best books around on the philosophy of problem solving, and an excellent primer on core concepts in signals processing, information theory, and computing.

sireat · 4 years ago

Fantastic recommendation! Hamming's writing is so clear and inspiring.

Not a book but his speech "You and your research" is quite good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw

L0in · 4 years ago

Do you have a similar book to study for "Highschool maths" before starting this one?

sn9 · 4 years ago

The Art of Problem Solving books are great and have complete solution manuals available as well.

earl_gray · 4 years ago

booboofixer · 4 years ago

Computer Networking: A top-down approach

The authors seem to be making video lectures for the book now too. http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/online_lectures.htm

bear8642 · 4 years ago

Bit old now, but enjoyed Steven's TCP/IP book too as he explores the various protocols

There are two out-of-field books that I always recommend to policy analysts, economists, and regulatory drafters: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, and Algorithms To Live By by Brian Christian and Thomas Griffiths. Both are high signal-to-noise primers on topics that are relevant in decision making and policy, but are rarely covered in an economics or public policy curriculum.

methusala8 · 4 years ago

Intro Data Science :

Introduction to statistical learning from Hastie, et all. Generously hosted for free by the authors here.

https://www.statlearning.com/

Breza · 4 years ago

This is an amazing book. It explains concepts like the bias-variance tradeoff more clearly than anything else I've read on data science.

tvalentius · 4 years ago

Design Pattern : Head first design patterns (eric freedman, kathy sierra, et al)

Communication : Pyramid Principle (barbara minto)

markus_zhang · 4 years ago

Definitely not in compiler field (and actually makes my recommendations more legit as field professionals tend to overestimate other people's ability to learn), but can recommend three books, ordered by difficulty asc:

Writing interpreters and compilers for the raspberry pi using python by Anthony J.Dos Reis

Crafting Interpreters by Nystrom

Game Scripting Mastery (Forgot the author and too lazy to Google)

Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken's The Elements of Computing Systems good starting point for various topics - It's the accompanying book to their Nand2Tetris course and, along with my explorations with the Raspberry Pi, was one of the starting points in my computing exploration.

bluefoot3 · 4 years ago

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

By Charles Petzold.

Perfect intro for a layman getting into Computer Architecture