4 ms·

Let me ask and answer some questions here that doesn't answer your question directly. What makes a good book and why there are tons of them on the same subject

Let me ask and answer some questions here that doesn't answer your question directly. What makes a good book and why there are tons of them on the same subjects? The best book for you is the one that speaks to your technical preparation and perspective. A few hits the sweet spot for a broad audience - perhaps because they are good at drawing analogies with common experiences - but even some obscure books can be good if it aligns with what your background. How can a mentor help and can you do without one? A mentor can help lay out the roadmap to build from simple topics to more difficult ones. Maybe more critically, provide rapid feedback on your understanding. They can also explain things in more than one way. Some textbooks do lay out the roadmap reasonably well, provided that it starts from concepts that you are already familiar with (again, you need to find the right book for you). Problem sets in textbooks are meant to provide feedback on your understanding, but it often fails to provide smaller hints if you can't solve the problem outright. You could get a set of solutions for the problems and that could partially help. Grabbing multiple textbook on the same subject can also help understand the most commonly covered (and by implication most essential) elements on the subject, and also give you multiple explanations of the same concept (though not always). Takeaway message? You could potentially try to pick up multiple books on the same subject and try to learn this way. Follow the one that speaks to your background most closely, but the others are also likely to help.

mindcrime 4y ago
You could potentially try to pick up multiple books on the same subject and try to learn this way. Follow the one that speaks to your background most closely, but the others are also likely to help. FWIW, one of my favorite maths Youtubers, the "Math Sorcerer"[1], highly encourages this approach. Don't fixate on one particular book, but buy many books on a given topic, and allow yourself to experience different presentations of the material. And as he often points out, if you're willing to accept used books, and older editions (which is often OK if you're not buying a book for a specific class), then you can quite often get copies really cheap from Alibris, bookfinder, etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMathSorcerer https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMathSorcerer
fluctor 4y ago
I have a stack of statistics books that I will flip through if I need explanation or illustration of a new concept. Usually one will help me out better than the others, but the combination of the different explanations usually improves my understanding. I suppose this is really a parallelization of the "third textbook" model (i.e., if the third textbook you try when learning something new seems "much better" than the first two, it might because you actually did learn some things from the first two).

mindcrime 4y ago

You could potentially try to pick up multiple books on the same subject and try to learn this way. Follow the one that speaks to your background most closely, but the others are also likely to help. FWIW, one of my favorite maths Youtubers, the "Math Sorcerer"[1], highly encourages this approach. Don't fixate on one particular book, but buy many books on a given topic, and allow yourself to experience different presentations of the material. And as he often points out, if you're willing to accept used books, and older editions (which is often OK if you're not buying a book for a specific class), then you can quite often get copies really cheap from Alibris, bookfinder, etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMathSorcerer https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMathSorcerer

fluctor 4y ago

I have a stack of statistics books that I will flip through if I need explanation or illustration of a new concept. Usually one will help me out better than the others, but the combination of the different explanations usually improves my understanding. I suppose this is really a parallelization of the "third textbook" model (i.e., if the third textbook you try when learning something new seems "much better" than the first two, it might because you actually did learn some things from the first two).