<p>
[QUOTE]
principles of mathematical analysis. walter rudin. this recommendation isn't very serious, but if you want to learn almost everything apostol says about analysis in one fifth as many pages, then read this book instead.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Now we're talking! I've only read parts of the text thus far, but I really enjoyed it. However, it would have been overly difficult had it been my first introduction to the subject. </p>
<p>And yeah, everyone should take my opinions, especially about books, with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>I should add though that not liking a textbook for a certain class isn't a big deal; there's material which I regard as Holy Works (Purcell's "Berkeley Physics Course", for instance), and other material which I don't care for. </p>
<p>Every student is like this, and it typically has no correlation whatsoever to the quality of lectures, since the professors are intelligent enough to come up with their own notes and ideas, sans having to recite directly from the book, zombie-style. (Yeah, I also hated that in high school)</p>
<p>If you read the book, you won't be bored in class. The lectures often go beyond the book and certainly have a different style and approach.</p>
<p>If you ARE bored in class, and you know everything, you can always talk to the professor and place out of it, in which case you get (often) free units and get to go on to more advanced material.</p>
<p>Mmmm, do you think we could add some more fun into The Booklist? :)
How about "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" ? It is one of the best books I've EVER had the pleasure of reading. Plus, Feynman's representative of Caltech. I guess each Techer should know sth about him.
There are other books of/about Feynman, but if you want to read just one, then this is it.</p>
<p>Yes! You should extend the reading list. I enthusiastically agree with</p>
<p>[ul]
[li] surely you're joing, mr. feynman. richard feynman.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Thanks a lot! I'll definitely be reading some of those over the summer.</p>
<p>seriously, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, by good 'ol RP</p>
<p>if you only read one book (ever), read this book.</p>
<p>Hehe...these threads seem so friendly. :]</p>
<p>i read the first 30 pages of Mr. Feynman on google books, its a pretty fun book, that guy is smart</p>
<p>Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman has a sequel that I happened to read before I picked up the first book.
[ul]
[*]What Do You Care What Other People Think?[/ul]</p>
<p>I read What Do You Care last summer.</p>
<p>Good book.</p>
<p>Haven't had a chance to read Surely You're Joking yet.</p>
<p>Oh, and since Murray Gell-Mann taught at Caltech for 39 years, he too deserves a notice.
Here's a very funny link about Feynman and Gell-Mann:
<a href="http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/seckel.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/seckel.htm</a></p>
<p>Ben, I wondered why the poems that kept coming up on these threads followed what I was currently reading so well - Sound and Sense is my current English book. I'm in love with my English teacher simply because I write well enough and she's sensible enough that she just lets me sit in class reading the book and utterly ignoring her attempts to convince us semicolons are not to be feared. ;) Also, Freakonomics almost made me go to U Chicago just to meet Steven Levitt. Almost.</p>
<p>Yes, well, now you know : )</p>
<p>Apparently applications for the graduate program in economics at Chicago jumped 20% after the publication of Freakonomics.</p>
<p>And I got to meet Levitt and Dubner when they came to Pasadena. <em>bounce</em>!</p>
<p>You did?!?!?! Awesome! Maybe Levitt will be at MIT at some point... or I'll go visit my buddy at U Chicago lol... oh, and the only poem I really wish Sound and Sense included is this one by Poe:</p>
<p>I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Levitt visits MIT fairly often -- seminars and the like. Just watch the econ website.</p>
<p>That is an intriguing poem. I once read some renowned critic say that Poe was not really a "poet" so much as a clever wordsmith. I don't know what to think about that.</p>
<p>Also, I can't quite figure this poem out, rhythmically -- the "obvious" reading (emphasizing the rhyme) is crude and wrong, but ignoring the breaks is odd too. It is certainly a challenge.</p>
<p>I got to see levitt speak in Colorado Springs. He was a very good speaker I just wish there was more economics he just kind of told stories but that was ok he was quite entertaining.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm surprised to hear you say that about reading it, actually. I've personally always thought Poe was one of the more intuitive poets to read. Out of curiousity, how do you find "The Raven" rhythmically?</p>
<p>I read this poem to the punctuation, lingering a bit on words that fall at the end of a line and on "important" nouns such as 'grains' in 'grains of the golden sand' because it evens thing out (I can't support that that is a technically "correct" way to read it, but it sounds right to me). Maybe that'll help! </p>
<p>Poetry is almost entirely about your personal reaction and interpretation, of course - this one happened to strike me so much that I'm basing my valedictorian speech on it (sand being personal integrity a la Ayn Rand; there's an entire beach of values and opinions laying around, but only a handful are truly YOURS and it's so easy to let that handful slip away...)</p>
<p>I'm so sorry for hijacking your series of reflections thread into a poetry debate!!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>kcastelle PM-ed me this (because she didn't want to hijack my thread) but I think it's okay if I hijack my thread ;-). For the record, I love discussions that go off the original path and I think poetry is a noble thing for this thread to be about.</p>
<p>I find "The Raven" beautiful and very intuitive. I can say now more completely what puzzles me about this poem. It goes great until "While I weep- while I weep", which is kind of jarring to me. Then the "O God!" lines seem awkward, and "one from the pitiless wave" seems to have too many syllables. (The whole 6/7 scheme seems a little haphazard to me.)</p>
<p>Finally "a dream within a dream" seems kind of disconnected and the metaphor isn't really... justified. (Why the nesting? Why not just one?)</p>
<p>The first time I read it, I still thought it was wonderful. But since you've clearly thought about this poem a lot, maybe you can explain what I'm missing about those lines?</p>
<p>Yay poetry : )</p>
<p>Poe wrote an article on prosody that you can find in his complete works that will probably explain how to read his poems.</p>
<p>The "pitiless wave" line is a bit wordy, I'll agree, but the overall seamless integration of logical flow and exact linguistic rhyme is classic Poe. The "nested" metaphor (as a side note, I'm really excited to hear someone else describe poetry in techie terms, as I think of it in my head) serves the purpose of preventing the misinterpretation that Poe meant the world is a dream but heaven/the afterlife/what-have-you is real. He is discrediting the human ability even to comprehend sense at a level a single "step" above ourselves. Had it simply been that the world is a dream, it would beg the question "whose?", which is somewhat beside his point.
Also, although I was going to interpret the sand as integrity for my own purposes, it is of course more about time slipping away. There is a first verse to this poem that makes that part more clear. Personally, I like the second verse better taken alone, but here's the other part if you're interested: </p>
<p>Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.</p>