
Ask HN: Books to learn applied maths? - nocoder
I am looking for books that can help me learn maths from a applied point of view. I have studied statistics &amp; I am comfortable with graduate level maths. I like books that start from applied point of view &amp; then move in to theory. Something like the Halliday, Resnick, Walker book on Physics, do you know anything  similar for maths? I understand that maths is part of many disciplines so I don&#x27;t mind if the books go into many different realms
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dagw
You're talking about a pretty massive field. That being said The Nature of
Mathematical Modeling by Neil Gershenfeld might be what you're looking for.
Each chapter is a short (15-25 page) introduction to one common tool in
applied mathematics. In that space you'll get an overview of when you might
want to use that technique, a brief description of the basic mathematical
theory underlying the method and a few examples of how it can be applied.

Of course you won't learn enough about any topic to be able to actually tackle
any but the most trivial of problems, but you will come away with a good
understanding of which technique you should use for which kind of problem and
have a good enough of a basis to be able to understand the more advanced books
on the given topics. Each chapter also ends with a recommendation of 3-4 books
which you can check out if you want to dig deeper into that particular topic.

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nocoder
Thanks for this. I checked out the book ToC and found it interesting. One
question, does this book assume the knowledge of the tool to start with?

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dagw
No. The book does assume you know and are comfortable with your calculus and
linear algebra, but each topic is covered from the start as it where.

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nocoder
Thanks. That's helpful

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MTsardakas
Howison's Practical Applied Mathematics has many illuminating examples of
maths being applied in a variety of fields. A good introduction to modelling
techniques with a nice balance between theory and examples is Applied
Mathematics by Logan.

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nocoder
Thanks for this. I checked them out and they sound very interesting, do you
recommend that I begin with one of them or is it fine to read them
concurrently?

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MTsardakas
It depends! If you want to see unusual examples of applied maths or a bit of
thinking out of the box, focusing on techniques and not theory, start with
Howison's. Logan builds theory alongside applications and is, therefore,
heavier on maths. If you're confident with graduate level physics though you
should be fine with both.

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wayn3
applied maths is a big field. is there anything in particular that is
interesting to you?

halliday is a book on experimental physics. it takes a phenomenological
approach because thats how experimental physics works. theres nothing
"applied" about it.

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nocoder
My bad, I studied it long back & did not realize that it was experimental
physics. What I meant was I really liked the approach in the book, it made
understanding concepts really easy for me. I don't do it really well
understanding from theoretical principles & working upwards, instead going
from application to theory works for me. As far as my interest goes, I am
interested in mathematical modelling of social & biological systems, i know
this might again be too broad but inputs will be appreciated.

