6 ms·

Street-Fighting Mathematics is published under CC [pdf]

89 points by realitygrill 16y ago

People seemed pretty interested in this book being published. I recently discovered that it's under a Creative Commons license, so enjoy! Sanjoy also has previous course material floating around (eg. Order of Magnitude Physics) and if anybody has links to those or comments I'm sure people would appreciate that.

yannis 16y ago
A highly recommended read. Not to spoil anyone's fun but gems like this abound: A valid economic argument cannot reach a conclusion that depends on the astronomical phenomenon chosen to measure time.(Discussing GDP and Multinationals in Nigeria).
noelwelsh 16y ago
Looks great! Now can someone get me more hours in the day?
- acangiano 16y ago
  Unless you are a very unique case, you'll should be able squeeze a book this size into your daily life. Let's assume that given the content and the font-size, an average HN reader would require an hour to read 10 pages (that's underestimating most people's reading speed of course). Then the book would require, on average, about 12 hours to read. If you dedicate 2 hours a day to it, you'll have finished it before the week is over. If you take the time to solve all the problems presented, it may take you a few more weeks, but it's not a major project like reading and doing all the exercises from SICP.
  - noelwelsh 16y ago
    This issue isn't so much the time to read the book as the time to read all the books I want to read. I already have two texts underway ("Concepts of Nonparametric Theory" and "Prediction Learning and Games").
carterschonwald 16y ago
I'm very excited :) The book is a combination of developments from the author's phd thesis and a likewise named course that has been run the past few years at MIT's iap term, and is chock full of great tricks and habits to do sophisticated calculations mentally (or at least with greater simplicity)!
- realitygrill 16y ago
  Do you have links to those? I know of the MIT ones, but I've also seen links to his Order of Magnitude Physics materials (at Caltech) floating around before.
jimmyjim 16y ago
Can anyone comment on what would be the 'prereq' for this? Are the video lectures available anywhere (he seems to have taught a class by same name before)? And, approximately how much time would it take for someone going over it as self-study? I know the answer to the last question probably depends, but hopefully a ball mark estimate can be given
- acangiano 16y ago
  It looks like an understanding of Calculus and basic Physics is all that is required to read this book. Ballkpark estimate (how ironic, having to do a ballpark estimation before having read a book on how to do ballpark estimates): between 10 and 30 hours.
  - jimmyjim 16y ago
    10 to 30 hours? How did you arrive to that number? The text seems to have many exercise problem. I was expecting an answer like '2 months, going with an hour a day'. At any rate, thanks.
    - acangiano 16y ago
      30 hours means 4 pages an hour. Even solving a few problems here and there, it's hard to imagine you'd proceed at a slower pace than that. That said, I didn't see that each chapter has a bunch of extra problems at the end. These may take you extra time. I still believe that it's a few weeks project at best, not months.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    When do you people in the US start to learn about integrals? Is it expected that a first-year undergraduate student already has the knowledge to understand the book? I don't have the required "prerequisites" as the GP puts it to understand the book, but I should :( and it might shame me into studying a bit :) (then again, I probably won't)
    - deleted 16y ago
sandGorgon 16y ago
Anyone have a epub version for the iphone/android ?
Lewisham 16y ago
I think the book is interesting, but I'm slightly disappointed it really wasn't about street-fighting. I think a lot about mathematics education is a domain issue. Problems are too easily wrapped up in tedious domains that don't engage the imagination. For one of my nationally-assessed Maths projects at school, the teacher had us analyzing football (soccer) scores, looking at standard deviations and the like. The class was far more engaged with the math than I'd ever seen them. All boys dream of being a bad-ass, so I'm sure mathematics in the domain of street-fighting would also work! ("A perp is able to accelerate his fist at 10 m/s, and his fist has a weight of about 0.5kg. A broken jaw requires 4N of force. How much force will he put in your face? Will he break your jaw?")
zitterbewegung 16y ago
Since its a small pdf it looks great on my kindle. I believe I read an earlier draft of this and I was impressed.
Rod 16y ago
Why link to the PDF? Why not link to the book's page? http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12156 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&#38...
- realitygrill 16y ago
  I thought it might be a bit hard to notice the pdf link - I'd visited several times but only noticed the CC license because of an Amazon review.
shirtless_coder 16y ago
I would much rather have this book in dead tree form. It seems like it would be great to sit on the couch with.

89 points by realitygrill 16y ago

yannis 16y ago

A highly recommended read. Not to spoil anyone's fun but gems like this abound: A valid economic argument cannot reach a conclusion that depends on the astronomical phenomenon chosen to measure time.(Discussing GDP and Multinationals in Nigeria).

noelwelsh 16y ago

Looks great! Now can someone get me more hours in the day?

acangiano 16y ago
Unless you are a very unique case, you'll should be able squeeze a book this size into your daily life. Let's assume that given the content and the font-size, an average HN reader would require an hour to read 10 pages (that's underestimating most people's reading speed of course). Then the book would require, on average, about 12 hours to read. If you dedicate 2 hours a day to it, you'll have finished it before the week is over. If you take the time to solve all the problems presented, it may take you a few more weeks, but it's not a major project like reading and doing all the exercises from SICP.
- noelwelsh 16y ago
  This issue isn't so much the time to read the book as the time to read all the books I want to read. I already have two texts underway ("Concepts of Nonparametric Theory" and "Prediction Learning and Games").

carterschonwald 16y ago

I'm very excited :) The book is a combination of developments from the author's phd thesis and a likewise named course that has been run the past few years at MIT's iap term, and is chock full of great tricks and habits to do sophisticated calculations mentally (or at least with greater simplicity)!

realitygrill 16y ago
Do you have links to those? I know of the MIT ones, but I've also seen links to his Order of Magnitude Physics materials (at Caltech) floating around before.

jimmyjim 16y ago

Can anyone comment on what would be the 'prereq' for this? Are the video lectures available anywhere (he seems to have taught a class by same name before)? And, approximately how much time would it take for someone going over it as self-study? I know the answer to the last question probably depends, but hopefully a ball mark estimate can be given

acangiano 16y ago
It looks like an understanding of Calculus and basic Physics is all that is required to read this book. Ballkpark estimate (how ironic, having to do a ballpark estimation before having read a book on how to do ballpark estimates): between 10 and 30 hours.
- jimmyjim 16y ago
  10 to 30 hours? How did you arrive to that number? The text seems to have many exercise problem. I was expecting an answer like '2 months, going with an hour a day'. At any rate, thanks.
  - acangiano 16y ago
    30 hours means 4 pages an hour. Even solving a few problems here and there, it's hard to imagine you'd proceed at a slower pace than that. That said, I didn't see that each chapter has a bunch of extra problems at the end. These may take you extra time. I still believe that it's a few weeks project at best, not months.
- GFischer 16y ago
  When do you people in the US start to learn about integrals? Is it expected that a first-year undergraduate student already has the knowledge to understand the book? I don't have the required "prerequisites" as the GP puts it to understand the book, but I should :( and it might shame me into studying a bit :) (then again, I probably won't)
  - deleted 16y ago

sandGorgon 16y ago

Anyone have a epub version for the iphone/android ?

Lewisham 16y ago

I think the book is interesting, but I'm slightly disappointed it really wasn't about street-fighting. I think a lot about mathematics education is a domain issue. Problems are too easily wrapped up in tedious domains that don't engage the imagination. For one of my nationally-assessed Maths projects at school, the teacher had us analyzing football (soccer) scores, looking at standard deviations and the like. The class was far more engaged with the math than I'd ever seen them. All boys dream of being a bad-ass, so I'm sure mathematics in the domain of street-fighting would also work! ("A perp is able to accelerate his fist at 10 m/s, and his fist has a weight of about 0.5kg. A broken jaw requires 4N of force. How much force will he put in your face? Will he break your jaw?")

zitterbewegung 16y ago

Since its a small pdf it looks great on my kindle. I believe I read an earlier draft of this and I was impressed.

Rod 16y ago

Why link to the PDF? Why not link to the book's page? http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12156 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&#38...

realitygrill 16y ago
I thought it might be a bit hard to notice the pdf link - I'd visited several times but only noticed the CC license because of an Amazon review.

shirtless_coder 16y ago

I would much rather have this book in dead tree form. It seems like it would be great to sit on the couch with.