What resources are recommended for building a home science and math library?

[jforce93]

Hi everyone,

I'm an 11th grade high school student trying to build a home science/math library. I love physics, math and computer science. I [STRIKE]could care less about [/STRIKE] don't find chemistry or biology to be very relevant to what I like doing, but it might be good to have a few general references on them (I do a lot of projects). Currently I have:

AP Calculus AB and BC from The Princeton Review
Algorithms and Data Structures = Programs by Niklaus Wirth
Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers
Holt Physics
Handbook of Mathematical Formulas and Integrals by Alan Jeffrey
The C Programming Language
The Handy Science Answer Book
The Linux Pocket Guide

I plan on adding books about:
Perl
GNU Octave
Analytical Geometry
Differential Geometry
Multi variable Calculus
Electrical Engineering
Chemistry (maybe an AP Chem textbook)
Arch Linux

Could anyone recommend anything?

Thanks,

Jordan

 

[micromass]

Two books every math/science-library needs to have is

- The princeton companion of mathematics.
- The Feynman lectures

A book on LaTex also wouldn't hurt.
An other book I like is the geometry book by Coxeter. Also "Mathematics: a very short introduction" by Timothy Gowers is good.

You also might want a calc-based intro physics book, often with titles "Physics for scientists and engineers". Not to forget a good book on linear algebra!

 

[jforce93]

Thanks. I'll definitely keep that in mind (now, if only I could afford the princeton one). And I'm taking AP Physics C, so if I like the book, I'll just have my mom buy one for

And LaTeX one would be good

 

[jforce93]

Just to clear things up, I'm not looking for books to learn things, I'm looking for references that will be important in the future.

 

[Sankaku]

Just to clear things up, I'm not looking for books to learn things, I'm looking for references that will be important in the future.

Because you never refer to books you learn from and never learn from books you refer to? You may find the distinction less clear than you think.

 

[Daverz]

Could we get some specificity on LaTeX books? I have the LaTeX Companion and can never find anything in it, so I can't recommend that one as a reference. Wasn't a good tutorial, either.

 

[jforce93]

@Sankaku
Sorry, what I meant was books that are references, not ones that I would use to teach myself the subject as soon as I buy it. Like if I buy a chemistry book (I hate chemistry) doesn't mean that I'm going to teach myself a course of chemistry, just as a reference.
My bad, sorry

 

[Perturbator]

Could we get some specificity on LaTeX books? I have the LaTeX Companion and can never find anything in it, so I can't recommend that one as a reference. Wasn't a good tutorial, either.

I personally use "More Math into LateX" by Gratzer. It's sitting beside me right now. I got it over the other's after reading the amazon reviews and thus far (two or three years later) am quite satisfied.

 

[jforce93]

Cool thanks!

 

[TylerH]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596000278/?tag=pfamazon01-20, by Larry Wall, himself, is supposedly a good Perl reference.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Well Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces - De Carmo is an invaluable reference for well just that! But I don't get why you want reference books instead of introductory texts?

 

[jforce93]

The Perl one looks inexpensive and Oreilly usually publishes good stuff.

 

[Vector Field]

I am not sure how useful this will be. You can have the most advanced reference books of all time and if you don't buy other books that teach you about the stuff then the reference books are useless.

I honestly don't own a single "reference" book. I own a great number of textbooks and I read them all, cover to cover, because that is what you do. I can't understand why you'd want a math CRC tables without first knowing the math, for example.

 

[brocks]

I have to agree with the others here. Math is not like history, where you can learn random facts out of sequence (not to slight history --- I realize that context is important, but it's still true that I can learn quite a bit about, say, the 16th century, without knowing anything about the 8th century. But I can't learn calculus without first learning algebra).

If you buy a reference book on some subject you don't understand, it may be out of date by the time you *do* understand it. Much better to get good introductory texts in the subjects you are interested in, and use the internet as a reference source until you have mastered the subject well enough to evaluate reference books for yourself.

 

[drkatzin]

I have to agree with the others here. Math is not like history, where you can learn random facts out of sequence (not to slight history --- I realize that context is important, but it's still true that I can learn quite a bit about, say, the 16th century, without knowing anything about the 8th century. But I can't learn calculus without first learning algebra).

If you buy a reference book on some subject you don't understand, it may be out of date by the time you *do* understand it. Much better to get good introductory texts in the subjects you are interested in, and use the internet as a reference source until you have mastered the subject well enough to evaluate reference books for yourself.

Agreed. Differential geometry jumps out at me as something you'd have a tough time understanding without at least some real analysis. Certainly you'd need to know multivariable calculus to have a prayer -- global differential geometry deals with generalizing multivariable calculus on a 2D surface to a more abstract type of surface, called a manifold. For analysis, you might want to start with Rudin Principles of Mathematical Analysis instead.