Clara ([info]anotherthink) wrote,
@ 2007-10-15 19:13:00
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I had a great weekend: ruby on rails, biking, math, coffee, drumming, beer, lolita nation, new england autumn, apples, good times with good people.

Now I am upset that it is dark out so early, and apprehensive about the coming time change that will intensify this problem. Fortunately I have more social activities to occupy my evenings with than I did last fall/winter; that will make wintersadness less acute, I am sure! There are probably also various "apartment hacks" I can do that will help with this as well.

I have yet to find a good sleep schedule for myself, though; I want to have a getting-up-early habit on weekdays to maximize sunlight time and working time, but I also want to be able to stay up late with people on weekends and not build up sleep debt.

Attn math people: can you recommend me math books? I am mathematically inclined but not mathematically knowledgeable, and it is time to fix this. I am up for somewhat difficult reading if I will get cool knowledge as a result!

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[info]maedhros5851
2007-10-16 12:10 am UTC (link)
How to Solve It by G. Polya is a pretty good read if you want to build some real math skillz. I'd also highly recommend The Incredible Dr. Matrix by Martin Gardner and Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, which are mathematical fiction and non-fiction respectively. David Berlinksi's A Tour of the Calculus is the best calc primer I've read when it comes to discussing the whys and wherefores, stitching it all together in a very sensible ball of math.

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[info]anotherthink
2007-10-16 03:35 am UTC (link)
excellent! I seem to already have the Berlinski, thanks to having parents who own a bookstore and believed me when I said five years ago that I liked math; I don't have that particular Gardner, but I believe reading Gardner at an early age may be responsible for some of my better qualities, and I will try to get a copy of that one.

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[info]cruft
2007-10-16 12:31 am UTC (link)
Landau's _Foundations of Analysis_ has been recommended to me by someone who ought to know. Same guy recommended two discrete math books: _A Survey of Modern Algebra_ (Saunders Mac Lane and Garrett Birkhoff) "if you want to be hard-core," and, for the less hard-core, _Discrete Mathematical Structures_ by Kolman, Busby, and Ross.

I haven't actually gotten around to reading any of these, but I trust the taste of the dude what recommended them.

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[info]anotherthink
2007-10-16 03:36 am UTC (link)
thanks! I may not be to the point of being hardcore about analysis or algebra (I think I need a firmer foundation in calculus first, perhaps?), but I will try to check out the discrete (superset).

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(Anonymous)
2007-10-16 12:36 am UTC (link)
I beg your pardon, that Mac Lane and Birkhoff isn't discrete math per se, but a superset thereof, it seems.

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[info]cruft
2007-10-16 12:36 am UTC (link)
Sorry, that was me.

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[info]hydrobromic
2007-10-16 01:17 am UTC (link)
Why don't you get up super early, work until sunset, take a 3 hr nap, then get up and be social?

as of now, I get up at 7:30 and suffer with the consequences of sleepiness all the time. sleepiness and sprossers.

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[info]anotherthink
2007-10-16 03:41 am UTC (link)
that is a possibility; I am not sure how well my body would attune to that, but I may give it a try.

for me at least, the consequences of sleepiness (even with many a sprosser!) suck more than forgoing the awesome late-night hanging out that I want to sometimes do. I am sure I will figure something out, though.

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[info]comedictheory
2007-10-16 03:24 am UTC (link)
Ask Santa Claus for one of these.

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[info]anotherthink
2007-10-16 03:43 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I think at this latitude I should probably spring for something of that nature.

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[info]derloos
2007-10-16 03:27 am UTC (link)
Stay up because you want to and wake up because you have to. Usually works. Put your laptop beside your bed - when alarm breaks in I open my eyes and, still half asleep, start checking incoming e-mails - one-by-one I'm awake.

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[info]sbisaac
2007-10-16 05:02 am UTC (link)
The weekend was fucking awesome. As for math: what are you interested in learning? Algebra, analysis, combinatorics, geometry, logic, topology, number theory, or something else?

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[info]anotherthink
2007-10-16 03:45 pm UTC (link)
everys thang! :P but I should of course start in one place: and I think that place is combinatorics/number theory/discrete miscellany.

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[info]pklemica
2007-10-16 01:04 pm UTC (link)
There's what I view to be a very accessible text by i.n. herstein called Topics in Algebra which I highly recommend. Algebra has very little to do with either Analysis or Calculus - they teach it later on in the math curriculum here because they teach it more theoretically and they teach it with the assumption that you've gotten exposure to certain sets already and so they can just reference them (I'm coming from the honours track so keep in mind I basically have no idea what I'm actually talking about here), but it really doesn't depend on Calculus or Analysis in the least - it's an entirely different animal, and herstein starts you off where you need, in Set theory. And it's pretty!

Also also, anything by John Conway should be really fun - that's more number theory stuff. And anything by Martin Gardner, who I know has already been listed here, is good for exposure to puzzles and further ways of things number-theoretically/combinatorially... when I was in elementary school, for some amount of time (we're talking on the scale of YEARS here) I would re-check out The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix every time it was due at the library (I have absolutely no idea why it was even *at* my school library - I was the only one to ever check it out, and it was, at the time, far too abstract/advanced for me to really get, either.), up until the point where the librarian told me I wasn't allowed anymore, I had to go buy my own copy ^_^

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