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Cambridge University Press make their books free until May
- WalterBright 7y agoThank you! Very nice, and appreciated. Nit: some of the text displayed overlaps other text (I'm using Chrome) especially when displaying math, making it hard to read.
- bichiliad 7y agoThis is wonderful! Does anyone have any particular recommendations (in any subject)?
- baking 7y ago"The Physics of Energy" by Jaffe & Taylor is definitely on my list. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/physics-of-energy/7FE67626190E6D164A71B0D61E061E63 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/physics-of-energy/7FE67...
- ironmagma 7y agoDynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies by Anil Rao https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Particles-Rigid-Bodies-Systematic/dp/0521187907/ref=nodl_ https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Particles-Rigid-Bodies-Syste... Dr. Rao’s systematic approach to solving dynamics problems is consistent and concise. He also has a companion set of lecture notes on YouTube. I remember it as one of the most challenging but rewarding aspects of my engineering school experience. All the principles are described mathematically in a coordinate-free manner. You’ll learn to set up equations of rigid bodies and constraints without all the guesswork and haphazard construction of coordinates typically encountered in a physics textbook.
- b215826 7y agoI haven't read the book, but looking at the contents I'm surprised that the author hasn't introduced analytical mechanics anywhere in the book. This might be a good introductory book if you haven't taken a mechanics course before, but using Newton's laws for understanding the dynamics of particles and rigid bodies is a terrible idea. > All the principles are described mathematically in a coordinate-free manner. Newton's laws aren't coordinate free, e.g., Newton's second law written in polar coordinates would look different from Newton's laws in Cartesian coordinates. But, Lagrange's equations are coordinate-system independent.
- ironmagma 7y agoThis is definitely not an introductory level book. On the contrary, I wouldn't recommend it unless you've done at least Calc 3 since you'll need a strong grasp of vectors and derivatives. Newton's laws say e.g. the net force on an object (a Euclidean vector) is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration (also a Euclidean vector). That in itself is entirely coordinate free, sure it assumes that the vector is not a moment, but that's different from dictating a particular coordinate system. You are right to say that if you wanted to express those laws in different coordinate systems, they would look different, but the key to this system is in essence that you leave any kind of coordinate projections till the very end (lazy evaluation, to put it in a computer science analogy), at which point much of the math is simplified due to term reduction, or various projections cancel each other out. What is tempting to bring in from other materials is the notion that a vector has coordinates, which as far as this philosophy is concerned, they don't. A vector is the direction and magnitude per sé, devoid of the concept of an origin or any particular unit vectors with which you could represent that vector numerically. It's a mindfuck for sure, and it confused all the students in the class for a solid 3 weeks; that's why it's great.
- b215826 7y ago> This is definitely not an introductory level book I disagree. I used Kleppner and Kolenkow as a freshman, and it has pretty much the same content as this book, and I would consider Kleppner and Kolenkow to be an introductory book. Sure, it's more advanced than more common freshmen books like Halliday and Resnick, but it is still very elementary mechanics. Newton's laws is just the tip of the iceberg that is mechanics. Most advanced books, including upper-division undergraduate books, would at least introduce analytical mechanics, whereas this book doesn't. If you want more advanced treatments of mechanics you should look at Landau and Lifshitz, or Arnold, or Marsden, or even Lanczos (the latter three making moderate to extensive use of Riemannian geometry and can be daunting for that reason alone). > but the key to this system is in essence that you leave any kind of coordinate projections till the very end That is not the definition of coordinate invariance, at least as defined in physics. Newton's laws aren't coordinate invariant because the acceleration involves the second derivative of coordinate basis vectors, and that is zero (or constant) only in very few coordinate systems, like Cartesian coordinates for instance. Of course, the statement F = ma still holds true, but becomes very cumbersome to use if, say non-orthogonal coordinate systems are used. As a simple example, try finding the equation of motion of a particle constrained on a smooth surface, say a paraboloid z = x^2 + y^2 in Cartesian coordinates using Newton's laws. Of course, this problem can be solved using Newton's laws by introducing Lagrange multipliers, but that essentially amounts to finding the constraint force. But it would be much better if you could avoid finding the constraint force altogether. > A vector is the direction and magnitude per sé, devoid of the concept of an origin or any particular unit vectors with which you could represent that vector numerically. You're right that it is important to distinguish between the geometrical meaning of polar vectors and their representations in a particular coordinate system. It's even more confusing when axial-/pseudo-vectors, e.g., the cross product of two polar vectors, are introduced since now they do depend on the handedness of the coordinate system used. And why should nature care about handedness? (It actually does, but that's a story for another day.) And this is precisely why analytical mechanics, which is an inherently geometrical subject, was invented in the first place! All equations in analytical mechanics are scalar equations and look the same irrespective of the coordinates you use to describe the system.
- mirekrusin 7y agoProgramming in Haskell by Graham Hutton
- b215826 7y agoUriel Frisch's Turbulence: The Legacy of A. N. Kolmogorov is an accessible introduction to one of the most important and still unsolved problem in classical physics. That book has over 7000 citations on Google Scholar. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/turbulence/FD8C5E35E5F1CA850E017461942A59AC https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/turbulence/FD8C5E35E5F1...
- rodolphoarruda 7y agoStrategic Decisions is an excellent summary for those looking for starting points in the most well known business strategy models. A good compilation.
- wdutch 7y agoComplex Analysis (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Plane) by Ian Stewart and David Tall was a particular favorite of mine as an undergrad
- adz_6891 7y agoAgreed. Complex analysis was a great course!
- flocial 7y agoI wonder how long it'll take for someone to release a scraper to compile epubs from this.
- Ghjklov 7y agoAnd how long for access to be removed prematurely...
- dependenttypes 7y agoPretty sure that you could find them on libgen for ages.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rikelmens 7y agohttps://repl.it/repls/LongHungryFolders https://repl.it/repls/LongHungryFolders you are welcome!
- skissane 7y agoNot all books, only some. I remember one of their books [1], it was available for free PDF download for a few months. I downloaded the PDF, then later wanted to read it again and discovered I'd somehow misplaced the PDF. And now it isn't available for free download any more. I was hoping it might be included in this, but it isn't. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/atheism-and-agnosticism/C0D61CA2D386696A43294D440B7F9C11 https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/atheism-and-agnostic...
- lostinroutine 7y agoHere you go: https://b-ok.cc/book/5260524/55d50b https://b-ok.cc/book/5260524/55d50b . Z-lib (above) and Libgen are usually my go-to if I'm not sure I want to (or can't) purchase a book.
- llvim 7y agois this legal?
- lalaland1125 7y agoNo. But not all illegal things are immoral.
- degski 7y agoLimiting the acquisition of knowledge to people with sufficient economic means is immoral, because it means that more than half the worlds population has no means to move forward, even if they are motivated and intelligent.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThough discussing Sci-Hub and scientific articles, much of this argument applies as well to textbooks and publishing generally: What the academic publishing industry calls "theft" the world calls "research": Why Sci-Hub is so popular https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_the_academic_publishing_industry_calls_theft/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...
- Psychlist 7y agoIs there a way to search just for things that are actually downloadable? My first 20 choices are not and it's getting a bit boring.
- baking 7y agoThey are not downloadable. They are available for online viewing. Check the "Only show content I have access to" box.
- rodolphoarruda 7y agoTheir ebook reader sucks. You have to go back to the index to advance between chapters. Bad UX, but that's for a reason.
- mkl 7y agoWow, thanks! That is really bad. I just spent several minutes unsuccessfully trying to get past the front matter. There are also lots of weird text positioning glitches in their SVG (!) version of the book pages.
- oh_ryan 7y agoMy company, VitalSource, which bought my startup Verba did this good thing too! We have over a 100k ebooks from top higher ed publishers (including CUP) available for free (download to your phone or computer, or use online)! You need an institutional email address from a 2- or 4-year non-profit semester based institution. Only America right now but we’re working on international! Check it out at https://get.vitalsource.com/vitalsource-helps https://get.vitalsource.com/vitalsource-helps or log in / create account at https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com, where you can download the apps too. Limited to seven titles per user, and you are automatically opted-out of any marketing now or ever and we won’t share your info with anyone. Enjoy and good luck to everyone, especially those whose campuses have moved to online instruction and you maybe lost access to physical books left behind, shared with a friend, or from the library!
- khafra 7y ago> ...did this good thing too! > email address from a 2- or 4-year non-profit semester based institution > Only in America > seven titles per user Good for you, but that's significantly more asterixes than Cambridge's offer. I'm not sure I know anybody who's eligible.
- asicsp 7y agoI was thinking on similar lines yesterday and today made the decision of making all my ebooks free for the foreseeable future. I made bundles [0][1] so that they can all be downloaded in one shot. There are five books - three of them on regex (Ruby, Python, JavaScript) and two on cli tools (GNU grep and ripgrep, GNU sed). Currently working on GNU awk, which will take another month if I want to include everything I had planned. Now, I'm thinking of releasing as drafts and see how it goes. I plan to release book markdown source as well in coming days. Already done for Ruby [2] [0] https://leanpub.com/b/regex https://leanpub.com/b/regex [1] https://gumroad.com/l/regex https://gumroad.com/l/regex [2] https://github.com/learnbyexample/Ruby_Regexp https://github.com/learnbyexample/Ruby_Regexp
- wantacker 7y agoI'm currently learning some Data Science with Python (and text-wrangling via the CLI) and RegEx is something I got by without, up until now. So thank you so much!
- asicsp 7y agoCool! If you need more resources for cli/python, I've some links collated: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/master/Linux_curated_resources.md https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/mast... https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/master/Python_curated_resources.md#further-reading https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/mast...
- supdatecron 7y agoThis is really cool Sundeep, thanks for doing this! Question for you: what did you use to draw the diagrams for the "Javascript Regex" book, such as on the cover? Thanks!
- asicsp 7y agoThat is known as railroad diagrams and provided by sites such as regulex[0] (which I used for js cover) and debuggex [1]. I've also mentioned it in acknowledgements within the book. [0] https://jex.im/regulex https://jex.im/regulex [1] https://www.debuggex.com/ https://www.debuggex.com/
- linker3000 7y agoJohn Wiley and Sons did similar a few weeks back for coronavirus-related research publications in the Wiley Online Library: https://novel-coronavirus.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ https://novel-coronavirus.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ Disclaimer: Works for Wiley (UK)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- conjectures 7y agoIf there's one to grab, it's Janes's Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/probability-theory/9CA08E224FF30123304E6D8935CF1A99 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/probability-theory/9CA0...
- conjectures 7y ago* Jaynes's
- Dahoon 7y ago"Free for viewing online for now" isn't exactly "making books free". More like "hey you can look at my things for a bit if you'd like but I'll hold it and tomorrow you gotta pay to see it".
- loco5niner 7y agoYes, but it is making them "free to access online during the coronavirus outbreak". Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
- ImaCake 7y agoThere's always libgen if the book you want is behind a paywall. Like it's cousin scihub, it is very easy to use, fast, and has most of the books you could possibly need. Considering the awful practices of most scientific publishers, I have no problems with illegally downloading textbooks.
- rikelmens 7y agoAnd... not free to download for everyone anymore.
- actualdc1 7y agoI wonder what they meant by "reported misuse?"
- Habeebvet2020 7y agoMerk veterinary manual book