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If anybody interested the best book to learn the category theory: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maclanecat.pdf https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranic
by Ceezy 6y ago
If anybody interested the best book to learn the category theory:
https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maclanecat.pdf https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maclanecat.pdf
- ectoplasmaboiii 6y agoFor anyone else interested, Tom Leinster (also of Edinburgh Uni) has also written a good short book for beginners: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~tl/bct/ https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~tl/bct/ I did his course at uni that used this book as a basis and it was great. Tough, but great.
- jbotz 6y agoWhy do you think this is the best book? And would someone's background, or lack thereof, in other fields of mathematics not have a bearing on that assessment?
- threatofrain 6y agoIf someone lacks interest in math I’m not sure category theory makes sense even in the FOMO way.
- Koshkin 6y agoTo someone who is not interested in math per se but rather in its applications to engineering, category theory, too, has something to offer.
- Ceezy 6y agoCause that's it's reputation in math circles. And recommended by most of my teachers. Also because I used it a lot. You don't need to read it top to bottom. I think people here are interested by monoid and stuff. But to do the monoid part you don't really need category. An Algebra course about monoid is good enough actually.
- bikenaga 6y agoMac Lane was one of the founders of category theory - see for example: "General Theory of Natural Equivalences" - Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders MacLane. Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 58, No. 2, (Sep., 1945), pp. 231-294 His "Categorical algebra" paper from 1964 is open-access: https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183526392 https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183526392 When his book came out it was the standard work for a while. I think some of the terminology he uses is no longer standard, and there are now many very good modern introductions. But his book is still a pretty good read, primarily because he was a wonderful writer with a very distinctive style. That said, the examples (given the time the book was written) are almost exclusively mathematical. The proofs and exercises are usually not difficult, but at a high level of abstraction (not surprisingly).
- Koshkin 6y agoThis book is intended for a "working mathematician." Also, the subject has progressed since the book was written.