5 ms·

Science Books of 2019

140 points by Anon84 7y ago

spacedome 7y ago
Perhaps a slightly different sort of science book, but I highly recommend "Foundations of Applied Mathematics" by by Humpherys, Jarvis, & Evans, the first volume of which was published in 2017, and of which the second supposedly will be published in 2019. Volume 1 is good overview of the Analysis needed in various applications, they give as examples "analysis, optimization, probability, statistics, differential equations, machine learning, and control theory". I found it useful as an overview of the theory one might need in a unified exposition, with a modern and pragmatic choice of topics and notation. Learning the topics previously from many books, all with different notations and ideas of pedagogy, can be confusing (to me at least), especially in understanding how different parts of the theory are interrelated. It even comes with computational "labs", the code for which is available freely online, something often lacking in books on numerical analysis, applied math, etc. My only complaint is that it somewhat leaves out differential equations. Definitely worth looking at! In particular the chapter on matrix calculus.
- bigmit37 7y ago
  Thanks for this. Going to check it out.
- rramadass 7y ago
  How would you compare this to "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" ?
  - playing_colours 7y ago
    "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" is an overview of Applied Mathematics, some applications of different areas of it, brief introduction into problems and areas. More for curiosity. This book is a textbook. It is "Foundations", good proper introduction, it does not go very deep, but it builds solid background. It's is actually going to be 4 books, so tons of knowledge. Moreover, here: https://foundations-of-applied-mathematics.github.io/ https://foundations-of-applied-mathematics.github.io/ you can find labs and materials in Python to back reading with practicing.
    - rramadass 7y ago
      Thank you; The link is informative.
azaras 7y ago
I have a question about: "Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds" I read "The Female Brain" by Louann Brizendine and all it makes sense to me but I am beginning to think that I (and this book) are wrong. ¿How is it possible that two opposing theses could be maintained in something like neuroscience? I can imagine that it is possible in Economics, Philosophy, Psycology and other similar sciences but in neuroscience it does not make sense to me.
- Vomzor 7y ago
  Gender and Our Brains cites studies and data that are selectively chosen to support a predetermined conclusion. As to why: > After almost 20 years of hearing the same invalid arguments (like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” waking up to the same song every day), I have come to see clearly that the real problem is a deeply ingrained, implicit, very powerful yet 100 percent false assumption that if women and men are to be considered “equal,” they have to be “the same.” Conversely, the argument goes, if neuroscience shows that women and men are not the same on average, then it somehow shows that they are not equal on average. Although this assumption is false, it still creates fear of sex differences in those operating on it. A critique: https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of-sex-differences/ https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
  - krautsourced 7y ago
    I'm curious: if the male and female brain, from a neuroscientific perspective, are truly the same - can we assume the book's author would be perfectly fine with all neuroscience from now on be done on male brains exclusively and the results then applied to female brains without further research? Somehow I doubt this.
    - detcader 7y ago
      Reading the book's blurbs and Kiser's descriptions I don't see anything about the book claiming m/f/intersex brains are all neurologically _identical_ in their developmental origins and trajectories... just that they aren't "gendered" (e.g. aren't structured in ways that cause tropes or stereotypes) and that there are many old myths related to the genderedness assumption in brains to be debunked. The Amazon description indeed reads "A breakthrough work in neuroscience—and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudoscience—that finally debunks the myth that there is a hardwired distinction between male and female brains" -- but it's basically a 0% that the author wrote that bit!
decebalus1 7y ago
Very disappointed with (pop-)science books these days. They're basically science history books. The formula is something like 60% (How it all started filler) + 5 % (An essay-worth of original relevant content + 35% (personal stories about conferences and papers). Looking through some of them on the amazon preview, these seem to be in the same league. Meh.
- ijustlurk 7y ago
  Are there any science books (pop or not) you could recommend that don’t into this pattern?
  - sombremesa 7y ago
    Atom Land is pretty good, though there are some problems with the analogy. If you use it with the internet as a supplement and are a bit forgiving regarding bad analogies (as with PG essays), it's great.
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
    The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies. It does cover a history of SETI, but goes into a lot of the theory that is generally beyond a bit of what I've seen discussed before in popsci. I thought I knew the subject very well, but learned a lot of new things.
  - decebalus1 7y ago
    Some books I enjoyed in the past years: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life-of-trees https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34272565-life-3-0 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34272565-life-3-0 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19395553-our-mathematical-universe https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19395553-our-mathematica... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555486-to-be-a-machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555486-to-be-a-machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7972148-proofiness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7972148-proofiness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817279-door-to-door https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817279-door-to-door https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013953-gut https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013953-gut
spodek 7y ago
Like many classmates getting our PhDs, I considered my field, physics, the most fundamental of all the sciences, joking that we could derive the rest. That was the 90s. In today's world, I consider the most important role of anyone who understands nature to help spread understanding of our environmental situation, though I consider the most important task now to lead. As far as science books, I'm going to share three titles I read this year I highly recommend, though they're about ten years old - Countdown, by Alan Weisman, for covering (over)population, especially for sharing examples of nations that lowered birthrates without coercion or legislation, yielding greater happiness and prosperity. - The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, for illustrating our effect on the world colorfully and inspirationally. - The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon, for illustrating how much more nature there used to be, how much we've lost, and how much more we stand to lose. - Limits to Growth, the 30-year Update, almost 20 years old, but the most thorough treatment of us and our environment. Critics criticize it, but all the criticism I've seen actually criticizes straw men and other misunderstandings (if you know of meaningful criticism please let me know). Meanwhile, this paper https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-papers/is-global-collapse-imminent https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-pap... from five years ago shows their "business as usual" model continues to be unreasonably accurate nearly 50 years later, suggesting to me LtG's relevance and poignancy. You can't go wrong reading any of these books, though I'd start with Limits to Growth.
- l0000p 7y ago
  There is an xkcd for that: https://www.xkcd.com/435/ https://www.xkcd.com/435/
yters 7y ago
Check out introduction to evolutionary informatics. Very readable application of information theory to evolutionary algorithms with deep implications.
myle 7y ago
Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought. I believe it is an excellent book written in a format that is accessible by almost anyone interested in economics. If you think that a random walk down the wall Street is a classic, then you should read this, since it suggests a model that expand on the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

140 points by Anon84 7y ago

Perhaps a slightly different sort of science book, but I highly recommend "Foundations of Applied Mathematics" by by Humpherys, Jarvis, & Evans, the first volume of which was published in 2017, and of which the second supposedly will be published in 2019. Volume 1 is good overview of the Analysis needed in various applications, they give as examples "analysis, optimization, probability, statistics, differential equations, machine learning, and control theory". I found it useful as an overview of the theory one might need in a unified exposition, with a modern and pragmatic choice of topics and notation. Learning the topics previously from many books, all with different notations and ideas of pedagogy, can be confusing (to me at least), especially in understanding how different parts of the theory are interrelated. It even comes with computational "labs", the code for which is available freely online, something often lacking in books on numerical analysis, applied math, etc. My only complaint is that it somewhat leaves out differential equations. Definitely worth looking at! In particular the chapter on matrix calculus.

bigmit37 7y ago
Thanks for this. Going to check it out.
rramadass 7y ago
How would you compare this to "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" ?
- playing_colours 7y ago
  "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" is an overview of Applied Mathematics, some applications of different areas of it, brief introduction into problems and areas. More for curiosity. This book is a textbook. It is "Foundations", good proper introduction, it does not go very deep, but it builds solid background. It's is actually going to be 4 books, so tons of knowledge. Moreover, here: https://foundations-of-applied-mathematics.github.io/ https://foundations-of-applied-mathematics.github.io/ you can find labs and materials in Python to back reading with practicing.
  - rramadass 7y ago
    Thank you; The link is informative.

azaras 7y ago

I have a question about: "Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds" I read "The Female Brain" by Louann Brizendine and all it makes sense to me but I am beginning to think that I (and this book) are wrong. ¿How is it possible that two opposing theses could be maintained in something like neuroscience? I can imagine that it is possible in Economics, Philosophy, Psycology and other similar sciences but in neuroscience it does not make sense to me.

Vomzor 7y ago
Gender and Our Brains cites studies and data that are selectively chosen to support a predetermined conclusion. As to why: > After almost 20 years of hearing the same invalid arguments (like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” waking up to the same song every day), I have come to see clearly that the real problem is a deeply ingrained, implicit, very powerful yet 100 percent false assumption that if women and men are to be considered “equal,” they have to be “the same.” Conversely, the argument goes, if neuroscience shows that women and men are not the same on average, then it somehow shows that they are not equal on average. Although this assumption is false, it still creates fear of sex differences in those operating on it. A critique: https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of-sex-differences/ https://quillette.com/2019/03/29/denying-the-neuroscience-of...
- krautsourced 7y ago
  I'm curious: if the male and female brain, from a neuroscientific perspective, are truly the same - can we assume the book's author would be perfectly fine with all neuroscience from now on be done on male brains exclusively and the results then applied to female brains without further research? Somehow I doubt this.
  - detcader 7y ago
    Reading the book's blurbs and Kiser's descriptions I don't see anything about the book claiming m/f/intersex brains are all neurologically _identical_ in their developmental origins and trajectories... just that they aren't "gendered" (e.g. aren't structured in ways that cause tropes or stereotypes) and that there are many old myths related to the genderedness assumption in brains to be debunked. The Amazon description indeed reads "A breakthrough work in neuroscience—and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudoscience—that finally debunks the myth that there is a hardwired distinction between male and female brains" -- but it's basically a 0% that the author wrote that bit!

decebalus1 7y ago

Very disappointed with (pop-)science books these days. They're basically science history books. The formula is something like 60% (How it all started filler) + 5 % (An essay-worth of original relevant content + 35% (personal stories about conferences and papers). Looking through some of them on the amazon preview, these seem to be in the same league. Meh.

ijustlurk 7y ago
Are there any science books (pop or not) you could recommend that don’t into this pattern?
- sombremesa 7y ago
  Atom Land is pretty good, though there are some problems with the analogy. If you use it with the internet as a supplement and are a bit forgiving regarding bad analogies (as with PG essays), it's great.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies. It does cover a history of SETI, but goes into a lot of the theory that is generally beyond a bit of what I've seen discussed before in popsci. I thought I knew the subject very well, but learned a lot of new things.
- decebalus1 7y ago
  Some books I enjoyed in the past years: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life-of-trees https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34272565-life-3-0 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34272565-life-3-0 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19395553-our-mathematical-universe https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19395553-our-mathematica... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555486-to-be-a-machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555486-to-be-a-machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7972148-proofiness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7972148-proofiness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817279-door-to-door https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817279-door-to-door https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013953-gut https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013953-gut

spodek 7y ago

Like many classmates getting our PhDs, I considered my field, physics, the most fundamental of all the sciences, joking that we could derive the rest. That was the 90s. In today's world, I consider the most important role of anyone who understands nature to help spread understanding of our environmental situation, though I consider the most important task now to lead. As far as science books, I'm going to share three titles I read this year I highly recommend, though they're about ten years old - Countdown, by Alan Weisman, for covering (over)population, especially for sharing examples of nations that lowered birthrates without coercion or legislation, yielding greater happiness and prosperity. - The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, for illustrating our effect on the world colorfully and inspirationally. - The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon, for illustrating how much more nature there used to be, how much we've lost, and how much more we stand to lose. - Limits to Growth, the 30-year Update, almost 20 years old, but the most thorough treatment of us and our environment. Critics criticize it, but all the criticism I've seen actually criticizes straw men and other misunderstandings (if you know of meaningful criticism please let me know). Meanwhile, this paper https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-papers/is-global-collapse-imminent https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-pap... from five years ago shows their "business as usual" model continues to be unreasonably accurate nearly 50 years later, suggesting to me LtG's relevance and poignancy. You can't go wrong reading any of these books, though I'd start with Limits to Growth.

l0000p 7y ago
There is an xkcd for that: https://www.xkcd.com/435/ https://www.xkcd.com/435/

yters 7y ago

Check out introduction to evolutionary informatics. Very readable application of information theory to evolutionary algorithms with deep implications.

myle 7y ago

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought. I believe it is an excellent book written in a format that is accessible by almost anyone interested in economics. If you think that a random walk down the wall Street is a classic, then you should read this, since it suggests a model that expand on the Efficient Market Hypothesis.