Since I’m going to be doing a lot of reading, I figured it’d be a good idea for me to post some information on the books and textbooks I’m reading. Here’s what I’m reading right now:
- The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
- Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik
- Introduction to Algorithms by CLRS
The Foundation Trilogy is a collection of three books in the Foundation series. The first section details the original settling of the First Foundation and their rise to power. The second section is about the rise of a being that can destroy both Foundations. The book concludes with the Second Foundation accounting for and fixing the damages done by the antagonist in the second section.
For those of you who don’t know, the Foundation series is about a new kind of science called psychohistory (and later, psychostatistics) and how one man develops it to help renew the galactic empire after it’s fall so that it doesn’t experience a thirty-some-thousand year period of chaos, but only a single millennium of it. I find this entire idea interesting because it encompasses all of my interests – math, economics, psychology. More on that in a later post though.
Concrete Mathematics is a highly recommended textbook on mathematics related to computer science. It’s name is derived from “Continuous” and “Discrete” mathematics. I’m only two chapters into it, but I’m enjoying both the writing style and content very much. For a math text, there is a great deal of humor. The math itself may be a bit difficult for some, but if you stick with it, it can be very beneficial to anyone interested in number theory, discrete or continuous mathematics and/or computer science.
Introduction to Algorithms is one of the most highly regarded texts on algorithm analysis and design. Rivest, one of the authors, is an instructor at MIT. If you check out the MIT OCW website, you should be able to find the course that follows this textbook. It includes the notes, lecture videos and quizzes and exams with their answer keys. For anyone who wants to learn about algorithms for one reason or another, Introduction to Algorithms is a must read, especially when the online videos are used as a supplement!
That wraps up what I’m reading right now. When next I finish a new book, I’ll be sure to leave some information up here about it.