Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?
Your choices needn't be only math books. They can come from any discipline or genre.
When you mention any book please add a line or two as to why it made you a better thinker and problem solver.
247 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadThe book is not actually about problem solving, but about deliberate practice. It is a bit tangential, but in seen problem solving as a skill, you can see how the principles in that book apply. A good book - however, like many books of this style, I find it somewhat repetitive too.
I don't do statistics in my day job, but having a solid foundation in the math and the theory and the proofs really had a profound impact on how I approach problem solving generally and root cause analysis specifically (just thinking about e.g. model specification and how you do it is a good exercise). It's still on my bookshelf and I'll pull it out and do a problem set from time to time just to stay sharp - even though, again, I don't do this for my job. Maybe, one day, I'll get a job with a baseball team or something. Understanding heteroskedasticity for example is one of those things where once you "get it", it really opens your eyes to a lot of things and you can't "unsee" it.
PS there are packages in R nowadays but back in the day we used STATA.
PPS if people don't like Wooldridge, what else would you recommend?
Edit: I know you said "Your choices needn't be only math books" but this is a statistics textbook, so it probably doesn't count as "math".
Both are still fun though.
Fight Club is another great movie as well.
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
Zero to One by Peter Thiel: philosophy for building companies and future.
Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson: a life of one of if not the most influential founder of our time.
Incerto 5-Book Set (Black Swan and Antifragile included) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: how to understand and win in life, literally.
Masterful distillation of the most important parts of current systems engineering and systems management into a broadly applicable systems thinking approach.
The book is now reworked to a course and is currently free: https://eem.institute/open-endedness/systems-thinking/
TBH I read the original (in Russian), and English translation does not seem to be of stellar quality.
I don't see a downloadable file of the english version of the book available anywhere, alas.
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (doing all the exercises is key). This book helped me think about how programs run, how state is stored, how you can build out asynchronous computation, and how you can build your own languages.
- Designing Data Intensive Applications. This book profoundly changed how I think about application performance and data. It describes so much about different kinds databases and query languages, that now I feel like I've got a big picture view of the whole industry.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This book really taught me to think rationally and logically. I think I really did not understand the scientific method until this book.
The more the merrier :)
My favorite part of the book is when Harry goes around trying to collect the signatures of people who believe (on flimsy evidence and against their better judgement) that another character has committed attempted murder. Their refusal to directly advertise their beliefs (thus subjecting themselves to later scrutiny if they're proven wrong) is a direct reflection of how people in real society like to take intellectual and strategic positions without accepting any of the risk or responsibility of being wrong.
[0]: https://www.readthesequences.com/
1) Those who won't engage with material if it's sexist
2) Those who think other people are stupid for not engaging with material if it's sexist
As an example, I could write:
> Because the book is very cringey at times and full of itself.
I've said this before, and the response was multiple times "who cares about that, what about how sexist it is? Can you believe how the female characters are written?" And then the topic of conversation is about the sexism of the author (and whether or not I can reliably identify sexism) instead of the content of the book, which is what I wanted to talk about.
I could also write:
> Because the book is very cringey at times, full of itself, and quite sexist
But then the response is either "why are you recommending it if it's sexist?" or "no it's not sexist, why would you say that?" And then the topic of conversation is again about the sexism in the book instead of the content of the book.
When things like HPMoR come up, the conversation trends towards the more controversial parts of it and less about the useful parts. I thought that using "for those who care" was enough of a lead-in to prove that I both (a) understand that the book is sexist and (b) understand that one doesn't have to ignore all of the content of a work just because it's sexist, but... apparently not.
I tried this, but got stuck on the first exercise that had you prove some mathematical thing. I concluded that I was too stupid for the book.
Never assume anything like this.
You just need different approaches to study different subjects.
Here is an approach which works for me which you might also find useful. There is too much out there to Study and Time is limited so the first thing to do is to Skim, Pick out the main Ideas/Concepts, Figure out their relevance to you and only after that revisit the Topics again if needed in Depth and doing the Exercises as needed. You need multiple passes over the subject matter, each focusing on different aspects and the last couple of passes putting everything together in a personal mental model.
For example when i first read SICP years ago, i was working on Protocol State Machines and was stuck (at work) on how to design a verification framework for the same which our clients needed to satisfy themselves that our implementation worked correctly as the official specifications laid out. SICP gave me enough knowledge to understand the problem and the enthusiasm to design a simple DSL to solve the same. Thus by reading it and without doing a single exercise (nor learning Scheme well) i had a huge ROI on my Time invested in reading that book.
So have confidence in yourself, and read anything and everything that you find interesting without beating up yourself over not doing it "properly". The point is to get exposed to new concepts/ideas and gain new perspectives/insights on already known knowledge.
It definitely makes Harry a massive arse if you enjoy the original character, but once I got past that it was actually an interesting read. A lot of the concepts have stuck with me and I've gone on to look into them further.
I'm curious about how to get the most out of this one. Do you have any recommendations for how to read it? e.g. did you go front-to-back?
Also the book could be read out of order, so I'd regularly solicit people to join when starting a new chapter. That helped keep membership to about 5-8.
Also I suggested people put reading the book in their year goals so they'd be motivated to finish.
I think about 6 of us finished the whole book.
These I read when I was a young art student. I learned a lot from the way they mapped the interior process of creative thought.
It helps you apply systematic thinking to get the best out of complex situations in life.
https://fs.blog/books/
Interestingly enough, I recommended it to a few friends of mine who quite clearly to me had toxic partners. In both instances, they thanked me for the book recommendation and took action to remove those people from their lives. Especially in relationships, it's good to have a frame of reference to tell whether someone truly has your best interest at heart, or they just want power over you and use your good nature to get that.
Keep in mind that the book is written in such a way to sound like your getting an education in politics from a full-blown psychopath, but once you get past that there's a lot of worth to be found.
The book is amazing at teaching you to solve problems, as it helps you analyze and understand the behavior of others.
It teaches you both what to do and what not to do in any given situation, but it also teaches you how to spot those who play the game of power as well.
It's a tool that not only helps you obtaining/maintaining power, but also how to take away power from others.
The principles in the book can mostly be applied to other things as well.
These are far more nuanced and all-encompassing books on what i call "Worldly Wisdom" i.e. dealing with the World as is rather than how you would like it to be. These sort of books are some of my favourites that i constantly keep going back to.
And Aristotle's metaphysics and Nicomachean ethics
They had an integrated understanding of the different kinds of knowledge and the phenomenology of the mind and the resulting errors we tend to make.
And since their traditions were esoteric, it's a nice challenge to read them critically to get what they're pointing at.
For those sniffing that these aren't mathematical models or category theories, realize that the entire family of logic can only tell you what's not possible. The real action in thinking is topologically sorting what's relevant, and that mostly depends on understanding yourself and others.
However, reading them is an exercise in frustration without a good classics scholar; they are rare and getting rarer.
https://www.youtube.com/@dr.michaelsugrue
I grew up playing Wolf3D and quake games, and in general have admiration for what they were able to build. So I am not sure if people without that context will feel the same way about the book though :)
You really see the highs and the lows in this book about the developing of prince of Persia. It is structured as a diary, so you can see other interests (learning Spanish, becoming a script writer). It is a good insight at how long developing something real feels IMO.
For example, learning sorting by doing is a waste of time, it will take you years to "experiment" yourself into quicksort.
Learning and applying what you learned is the key.
Spent a few years trying to figure out how Help people without trying to force businesses to do what’s right.
Anytime I hear a new fiscal policy or laws idea I can usually figure out if it’s going to work or cause problems
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Underst...
The idea of the Veil of Ignorance for deriving fundamental principles of justice is now one of the most fundamental ideas in my own moral philosophy.
The concept also carries a kind of common-sense appeal that practically bridges the gap between "is" and "ought." Maybe it bears some relationship to human instincts for social behavior and empathy -- is there any literature that describes such a relationship?
That intrigues me, because if there's one thing that is particularly tiresome about Socialists it's that they invoke Hegel to rationalize everything they want and propose.
Woefully lacking in details here.
What part would you like more elucidation of?
My current thinking is that, since normative principles (what ought to be) cannot be demonstrated to be universally true, the best we can do is demonstrate that they are consistent with our core instincts and motives. For example, being generous to others is not right based on some external principle, but because if I had sufficient emotionally maturity, security, and insight I would recognize that my deepest desires extend far beyond immediate gratification of my physical desires.
[0]: https://moralfoundations.org/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca3e714d74562b554c38...
> hopefully keep them at bay as much as possible
...wishful thinking, or symptom management, rather than cutting at the root of the issue (less than rational thinking)? Would be happy to be corrected here.
Read this and heard his speeches, took detailed notes and am going through berkshire's annual meeting recordings since 1994 and it's surprising how many of these concepts reflect in warren and charlie's decisions, answers and thought processes.
I'm going to be spending more time on this.
What has done the most for me is actually running into lots of problems and solving them by digging deep, finding the cause, and a good way to solve it. One thing that's been invaluable is the idea that any problem can be solved, any system can be understood (as well as necessary to solve a problem), and that everything is fair game and in scope for solving the problem (thinking outside the box? there's only the box you put yourself in).
Nowadays, I'm mostly learning how to better explain the thought processes behind good software engineering that is all about tradeoffs and not about following rules or applying patterns without assessing applicability.
Another superpower is always to think of the simplest thing that will work. Avoid using fancy words or creating abstractions that make software seem sophisticated and complex when unnecessary. That only lowers the limit of how complex a problem you can solve. If you get really good at thinking and solving problems in simple ways, you can solve much more complex ones when called for.
I would suggest an entirely different path: play Go, the board game. The rules are incredibly few and easy to learn. The tactics and strategy limited only by imagination and ability to count/execute while balancing priorities (important vs urgent). Another thing that it teaches is the counter-productivity of ego. There's odd parallel I've noticed where getting good at Go makes you better at other things and vice versa. I've taken a year or more off playing and when returning to the game, find I quickly get back to my past level and beyond. Alternatively, if a bit masochistic play StarCraft 2 ladder ;-)
Art of War. Good example of a creature to last a damn long time.
This book changed the way I think about user experience as a developer. I’m not a designer at all but when building a UI I try to think of it from a user perspective now because of this book.
Then if you like it go to: The logical thinking processes; A systems approach to complex problem solving by Dettmer.
And finally if you need to improve not only you thinking but that of a group in an open discussion go to: Dialog Mapping by Cocklin
Already a semester or two (of real analysis, linear algebra, experimental physics, theoretical physics) would get one very far I think.
As for books, https://theoreticalminimum.com/ might be a great starting point.
Since it is a book thread:
The Information: James Gleick - really made me take a step back to think about what information is and how we talk about it
Reinventing Discovery: Michael Nielsen - It was some years back now but I had trouble reading it because I kept having to write things down or read about a new idea the book just put into my head. It really was thought provoking at the time.