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Prof. Sussman's Reading List
- bcbrown 12y agoI really enjoyed Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point, by Huw Price.
- abc_lisper 12y agoQuantum Computing since Democritus in high school reading list is very heavy. I have had Theory of Computation class in college and I can't read 20 pages of that book.
- selimthegrim 12y agoIt's not any heavier than GEB, and they will probably get more out of it. My picks in there would be Lanczos, Heinlein, and Levy, and SICP and SICM.
- abc_lisper 12y agoUmm.. I could read GEB; it was tough but more understandable. QCD is way over my head :), but may be because I am dumb.
- sir-pinecone 12y agoHah, I'm sure a great number of people would say being able to read GEB makes you not dumb.
- abc_lisper 12y agoI agree with you on SICP. Reading it was the single biggest improvement in my career as a programmer.
- madars 12y agoTo provide a second opinion: for me it was probably one of the best books I read last year -- extremely lucid writing and very lively. I think I would have loved it in high school.
- pjungwir 12y agoI'm reading QCsD right now and loving it. But in high school? That sounds crazy. It'd help a lot to already understand Godel's proof, big-O notation, and P-vs-NP. Also relativity and quantum mechanics. And maybe some group theory.
- randomnumber53 12y agoI'm a current HS senior who took a Theory of Computation class the year prior, and I got a few chapters into QCSD before realizing that I needed to learn some more about complexity theory before I read that book. I'm planning on trying again once the summer begins. Now I'm about half-way through Godel, Esher, Bach, and I have to say that GEB and QCSD feel similar, with an overlap not only in theme but also in genre and style.
- gone35 12y ago...I got a few chapters into QCSD before realizing that I needed to learn some more about complexity theory before I read that book. I'm planning on trying again once the summer begins. It might be a bit overkill, but if you go over the main chapters of Arora and Barak you should have more than enough background in complexity theory for your purposes.
- derefr 12y agoOn the other hand, if you treat each page, each statement as something you have to completely internalize before moving onto the next page—including looking up all the prerequisite topics recursively on Wikipedia or in other texts—you might just end up teaching yourself up to college-level math while still in high school. (I didn't do this myself with QCD, but I very nearly did it with SICP in middle school.)
- octatoan 12y agoYes, I've been doing this for a while and I think it just might be working.
- 31reasons 12y agoSICP in Middle School! who are you ? Please start working on fusion if you are not already.
- kiba 12y agoI wish I can manage that level of self motivation while in high school.
- thrownaway2424 12y agoHave you tried not having any friends?
- peregrine 12y agoI think he meant emphasis on "High" meaning high schooling. Not "high school"
- Retra 12y agoThat would be a very unusual phrasing if that is true.
- Strilanc 12y agoQC since Democritus is a weird mix of textbook and popularization; I think you could absolutely read it without understanding the details and still enjoy it. You won't get as much, but you'll still get something. I didn't understand much of algorithms or quantum computing when I first read the lecture notes the book is sourced from [1]. Was still worth it. 1: http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/ http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/
- nabaraz 12y agoI cannot recommend 'The Society of Mind' enough. This was my first book before diving into Cognitive Science. Although it is mostly psychology(i.e.speculation), it is a brilliant book with insights and ideas.
- nichochar 12y agoI'm confused, you recommend it? Or you don't
- dnt404-1 12y agoWhy do find psychology to be speculation? Do they not use empiricism in their studies (maybe not all of them)?
- theVirginian 12y agoHe/she's trying to seem intelligent by dismissing psychology. That is why it is speculation.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- kylebgorman 12y ago"Empiricism" does not usually refer to taking measurements (which seems to be what you have in mind); it is a theory of epistemology which holds that knowledge is primarily experiential. (It just happens that many psychologists are causal empiricists, but it has nothing per se to do with their love of measurement.)
- erhupisg 12y agoRobert McIntyre is a wizard in his own right. He has taken the prowess of his mental faculties to the extreme, even mastering the art of bioluminescence.
- octatoan 12y agoCould you explain?
- kjak 12y agoI'm happy to see The Variational Principles of Mechanics (by the great Lanczos) on that list. It really is deep, and I think it does a fantastic job of explaining classical mechanics. I've read the vast majority of the book multiple times. Since we're on the topic of Sussman, has anyone here read through SICM? I've heard that the code is difficult to get to work, but does anyone have an opinion on the rest? I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Anyone read both Lanczos and SICM?
- chm 12y agoI bought Lanczos' book a month ago, I'm ~75 pages in (got other stuff to do). I will give SICM a try. I've just installed the 'ScmUtils Mechanics' package to accompany the book. How can the code be difficult to get to work if he ships the required package with the book?
- tjl 12y agoI referred to the Lanczos book quite often when I was working on my PhD. I've read the first part of SICM and skimmed the rest. Based on that, it looks like it does an excellent job in building up an understanding of how the math works. By the time I looked at SICM, I had implemented my own code to do something similar (coded in Maple). It looked like the progression of the code was well handled. On the whole, I think Lanczos is a better book, but SICM is fairly decent. I'm also partial to Meirovitch's Methods of Analytical Dynamics which I think does the best job of explaining the inclusion of non-conservative forces in the Principle of Least Action. This is needed for applied forces and torques like a motor. It also covers the inclusion of damping forces well. Like Lanczos, the Meirovitch book is available from Dover, so it's pretty inexpensive. The SICM code really only works for a specific scheme interpreter, so if you have that it should be fine.
- mark_l_watson 12y agoGreat list. I had misplaced my copy of the Connection Machine. So glad to have access to the PDF. Thanks!
- jeffreyrogers 12y agoDo people actually read all the books they recommend? I often tell people books are good, esp. books on some mathematical topic, without having read the entire thing myself, just selected parts as my inclination takes me. In fact, there are almost no textbooks I've read straight through.
- jfe 12y agoI don't read whatever people recommend to me; I prioritize what's available based on what I think will have the greatest impact on me. But whatever I do read, I try to read it all the way through. Books have layers, like an onion. Each time you read a book, you peel back another layer of meaning. The first time I read a book, I don't let myself get hung up on what I don't understand; I just keep reading until I've reached the end. Then, if the book is really worth re-reading, I'll do it, and pay more attention to the details. You can get through a lot of tough material that way, and get 85-90% of the benefits as you would just sitting there, trying to grok every. Single. Word.
- iamcurious 12y agoI do the same. I also have the philosophy that a book worth reading is worth re-reading. Sadly, you have to read it the first time without knowing if it will be worth reading at all.
- olalonde 12y agoPaul Graham wrote an essay on this: http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html
- lmm 12y agoI never recommend a book I haven't read in its entirety.
- steveeq1 12y agoAlso, for anyone else whose interested: Alan Kay's reading list: http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp Bret Victor's reading list: http://worrydream.com/#!/Links http://worrydream.com/#!/Links
- abecedarius 12y agoOn The Connection Machine: "Beautiful thesis, though it doesn't tell you anything you can really do today." I don't understand: is data-parallel computing on a GPU much worse somehow? Or is it that there are better sources to read about data-parallel algorithms?
- prestonbriggs 12y agoYeah, data-parallel computing on a GPU doesn't really approach what Hillis was aiming for. Check especially CM Lisp; great stuff.
- sedachv 12y ago> is data-parallel computing on a GPU much worse somehow? OpenCL is a very awkward way to do vector processing - everything is hard-coded to an abstract model of a typical consumer GPU memory hierarchy. CUDA is even worse with a ton of versions all having different limitations according to what the Nvidia chips can do. It's awkward to do a lot of SIMD tasks on GPUs. The Connection Machine was a general-purpose SIMD originally designed for parallel graph algorithms. OpenCL looks like what the Connection Machine C* language might get macroexpanded into prior to compilation: http://people.csail.mit.edu/bradley/cm5docs/CStarProgrammingGuide.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/bradley/cm5docs/CStarProgramming...
- abecedarius 12y agoThanks. I've read Hillis's book but not studied the modern stuff; I'd gotten the impression the hardware was capable of about as much, and faster now, even if organized differently -- shared memory instead of a network -- and with less-pleasant languages.
- sedachv 12y agoThat was pretty much where Thinking Machines was headed before bankruptcy - their third model (CM5) was a SPARC cluster primarily for running Connection Machine Fortran and C*.
- baddox 12y agoInteresting to see Stranger in a Strange Land on his list. It shows up quite often on top lists of sci-fi books and Heinlein books. I'm halfway through it, after reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Stranger in a Strange Land is certainly the weaker book so far in my opinion.
- iamcurious 12y agoDon't hurry, wait and you will grok it in time.
- baddox 12y agoBelieve me, I'm not hurrying. I haven't touched it since Christmas last year.
- dublinben 12y agoAs I struggle to wade through it, I wonder why it was ever as popular as it once was. What is it about this book that make so many people recommend it?
- jacalata 12y agoSame thing as Ayn Rand - gibberish philosophy that appeals very strongly to the teenager who thinks that they are the special one.
- baddox 12y agoA funny comparison, since I could see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress getting compared to Ayn Rand due to the depictions of (and brief philosophical expositions on) stateless society.
- jacalata 12y agoYea, definitely: I haven't read either of them in a while, but my memory is that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress felt like it had a plot with some philosophizing added on, but Stranger In A Strange Land was political exposition/description of wish-fulfillment orgies with an attempt at forming a plot around it, and that's why it is more like Ayn Rand novels.
- kirpekar 12y agoHeavy list, I've read a few, but skimmed through most of these. I'm certain only a handful of people have read all these books completely.
- dschiptsov 12y agoI would suggest a small addition - https://archive.org/details/Sarvepalli.Radhakrishnan.Indian.Philosophy.Volume.1-2 https://archive.org/details/Sarvepalli.Radhakrishnan.Indian.... The first volume, at least.)
- bdamos 12y agoShameless plug for one of my side projects to manage reading lists with YAML and GitHub pages: https://github.com/bamos/reading-list https://github.com/bamos/reading-list
- gshubert17 12y agoThe first book's author is misspelled: Remove the "l" from "Schultz" to "Schutz" [0] [0] http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-General-Relativity/dp/0521887054/ http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-General-Relativity/dp/052...
- gshrikant 12y agoHas anyone read the probability text mentioned in the list - Probability: The Logic of Science by Jaynes? It looks like the text is freely available; I skimmed through the first chapter and it makes sense to me so far (I don't know how long that would hold true). I've been looking for a basic probability text for some time now, nothing too heavy but something to compensate for not having taken enough math in college.
- nextos 12y agoI think Jaynes recommended Sivia & Skilling [1] as a companion book, but I cannot find the citation now. It might even make sense to read it beforehand. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198568320/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198568320/
- rurban 12y agoKAM: Automatic Planning and Interpretation of Numerical Experiments Using Geometrical Methods * By Kenneth Man-Kam Yip, 1989 * Coolest PhD thesis ever! * Solve problems using graphs. * So cool! This caught my interest: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7025 http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7025 It is indeed one of the coolest papers and programs ever. KAM is a smart ODE solver, written in ZetaLisp on a Symbolics. It analyzes 2D pointsets created by any 2d equations, esp. non-linear ones. Typically a system of ordinary or partial differential equations, with a set of boundary and initial conditions. A typical non-linear physical system. It creates MST's (Minimal spanning trees) of the calculated points to get the shape and number of curves, to see the number of clusters (checking the distance of the curves), and if the curves are linear or space filling. Then the phase space is searched for initial states and end conditions, and to get useful summaries. It cannot do shape matching though, so repetitions and mirroring are not detected as such. The goal is to get high-level descriptions of the model and the numerical dataset, and at which parameter ranges and conditions the system falls into chaos. Chaotic systems are bad for predictability but mostly good for engineering purposes.