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by hydandata 2003 days ago
Without any doubt The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming. I have accomplished more in 5 years after reading it than I did in 15 years before. Much of it I attribute to the change of perspective the book brought about for me and to the fact that I have a vision of my future now. It also helped develop my own style.

Second would be The Language of Mathematics by Baber. As someone who did not do well with math in school or uni but was always good with languages and programming, I have benefited greatly from it by finally “getting” math.

4 comments

I was Googling your suggestions and found out that Richard Hamming has series of lectures on Youtube. I'm two hours into them and they're excellent. Thanks for your suggestion. Here's the link for anyone else who might be interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhXS6cODQg&list=PLctkxgWNSR...
Can you please share what insights you gained from “the art of ...” and how you utilised them to accomplish more in the last 5 years?

Have heard many good things about the book - curious to get some concrete anecdata

Is The Art of Doing Science and Engineering similar to Richard Hamming's talk You and your research[1]?

[1] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

I'll second The Art of Doing Science and Engineering. Oustanding book that covers problem solving approaches, traps to avoid, and how human interactions deal with tech.