
Prof. Sussman's Reading List - jonnybgood
http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-list.html
======
steveeq1
Also, 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)

------
kjak
I'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?

~~~
tjl
I 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.

~~~
lrc
Clojure is underway:
[http://github.com/littlredcomputer/math](http://github.com/littlredcomputer/math)

~~~
tjl
That's interesting, but I get a 404 for that link.

~~~
jonnybgood
[https://github.com/littleredcomputer/math](https://github.com/littleredcomputer/math)

------
nabaraz
I 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.

~~~
dnt404-1
Why do find psychology to be speculation? Do they not use empiricism in their
studies (maybe not all of them)?

~~~
im3w1l
Until very recently (mid 90's) many psychological phenomena were explained by
childhood experiences, in line with Freud's psychoanalytical theory. Many of
these have since been disproved. One criteria I have for trustworthiness of a
scientific discipline is that of stability. If the previous theory has been
found to be very wrong, very recently, then I am cautious to trust again.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_theory#Critics_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_theory#Critics_of_psychoanalytic_theory)

Specifically note that his theory, although debunked, still lives on in
philosophy and literature analysis. This "stickiness", that people refuse to
give up the theory when proven wrong is additionally a bad sign.

Recovered memory therapy is a recent failure
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-
memory_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy)

~~~
pyrois
People really like to trash Freud, but you have to put him into context.
Before Freud, we had a few branches of psychology: philosophical psychology in
England arguing about empiricism vs. nativism, Wundtian psychology in Germany
sitting around asking very specific questions that they answered using
introspection, and in the States we had the very first blossoming of the
behaviorism that would dominate psychology in the States until the '60s[0].
Some of these approaches had a concept of the subconscious, but they all
viewed it as a static warehouse for previous experience, and very few people
thought about it in a serious way.

Freud's major contribution to psychology was that we actually have a dynamic
subconscious that profoundly affects how we live our lives. This aspect of his
theory has become so ingrained in our culture that it's hard to imagine the
world before Freud. Also, that aspect of his theory has held up over the
years.

Also, he got a number of things correct: many of his coping mechanisms have
strong empirical support, for instance.

Freud was wrong in detail, but his overarching approach changed psychology for
the better.

[0] Yes, I know this "history" is a vast oversimplification.

~~~
mafribe
The concept of subconscious is much older than Freud, it was a staple of the
romantics. Freud proposed a specific structure theory of the subconscious
centred around the Oedipus complex. That specific theory is indefensible.

------
abc_lisper
Quantum 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.

~~~
derefr
On 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.)

~~~
kiba
I wish I can manage that level of self motivation while in high school.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Have you tried not having any friends?

------
gshrikant
Has 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
I 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/)

------
baddox
Interesting 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.

~~~
dublinben
As 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?

~~~
grey-area
His writing is terrible on the level of style, characterisation, and even
plot, but I think many of the ideas he expressed about human relations in his
books are profound - that the rules which govern our societies are temporary,
contingent and negotiable, that we don't live according to the principles we
claim to, that _free_ is often anything but, that colonies often become
stronger than the parent society, that revolution comes when there is too big
a gap between perception and reality, the tension between soldiers and
citizens etc.

~~~
lmm
Are you sure you're not thinking of Starship Troopers?

~~~
grey-area
I was thinking about all his books.

------
rurban
KAM: 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.

------
erhupisg
Robert 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
Could you explain?

------
kirpekar
Heavy 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.

------
gshubert17
The first book's author is misspelled: Remove the "l" from "Schultz" to
"Schutz" [0]

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-General-
Relativity/dp/052...](http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-General-
Relativity/dp/0521887054/)

------
jeffreyrogers
Do 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
I 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
I 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
Paul Graham wrote an essay on this:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html)

------
abecedarius
On _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?

~~~
sedachv
> 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/CStarProgramming...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/bradley/cm5docs/CStarProgrammingGuide.pdf)

~~~
abecedarius
Thanks. 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
That 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*.

------
dschiptsov
I would suggest a small addition -

[https://archive.org/details/Sarvepalli.Radhakrishnan.Indian....](https://archive.org/details/Sarvepalli.Radhakrishnan.Indian.Philosophy.Volume.1-2)

The first volume, at least.)

------
bdamos
Shameless 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)

------
mark_l_watson
Great list. I had misplaced my copy of the Connection Machine. So glad to have
access to the PDF. Thanks!

------
bcbrown
I really enjoyed Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point, by Huw Price.

