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Calculus, by James Stewart. I recommend you buy a dead tree copy of an old edition (I paid $5 for mine, shipped. I don't know how they made money off that sale.
by tsomctl 10y ago
Calculus, by James Stewart. I recommend you buy a dead tree copy of an old edition (I paid $5 for mine, shipped. I don't know how they made money off that sale.) Might not be the best book, but it covers everything you need to know, has good exercises, everyone uses it, you can find the solutions manual online, and the harder problems have an answer on stack overflow.
And some linear algebra book by Strang (as others have said.) I don't remember which one I learned from, but I do remember it was excellent.
I can't recommend a good stats/probability book. People recommend Statistical Inference by Casella and Berger, although I wasn't super impressed with it.
You'll also want a good understanding of set theory and proof writing. I don't remember what book I learned from, but try to find some introduction to math thought.
This is all assuming you have a good understanding of algebra. The above mentioned books require geometry/trig, but you don't actually need that for machine learning.
- weaksauce 10y ago> Calculus, by James Stewart I learned from the Stewart book and it's not terrible, but I don't think that is a very good book for self learning. How to ace calculus or the calculus lifesaver, plus a book with solved examples is probably better for self study.
- NamTaf 10y agoThis was my university calculus textbook and I liked it well enough. Granted, I was learning with the assistance of lectures to teach me the concepts too so I don't know how you'd fare with only this textbook, but I liked it well enough to drop coin on a physical copy. My philosophy with textbooks was to buy only ones I felt I'd go back to after uni - basic references in each major field I studied - and this was reasonable for me for calculus. My only regret was shelling out for new copies because I was young and stupid and thought I needed them right now for the class, before I knew better. You can certainly pick up cheap second-hand copies per the parent post. I also used Kreyzig too but found that to be a bit harder to learn from, albeit more in depth.
- physicsyogi 10y agoI'd also recommend Calculus for the Practical Man. It's what Feynman used and is quite good for learning how to calculate various things with calculus. Incidentally, my college calculus class also used Stewart.