#+title: Prof. Sussman's Reading List

 #+author: Gerald Sussman (compiled by Robert McIntyre)

 #+email: rlm@mit.edu

 #+description: Professor Sussman's reading recommendations

 #+keywords: sussman physics computer science reading list MIT

 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org

 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org

 #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both

 

 If you want to cite any of these papers, [[./sussman-recs.bib][here]] is a bibtex format file

 that contains all of these papers in the order they appear on the

 page. ([[./sussman-recs.bib]]).

 

 * Recommendations

   - Computers and Thought, by Edward A. Feigenbaum (Editor), Julian

     Feldman (Editor). 

     - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computers-and-thought][MIT Press]]

     - ISBN: 0262560925

     This book includes some of the very interesting early papers in

     AI, and is overall a great book. Of course, some of the included

     papers are not very interesting. 

 

   - The Configuration Space Method for Kinematic Design of Mechanisms,

     by Elisha Sacks and Leo Joskowicz

 

     [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/configuration-space-method-kinematic-design-mechanisms][MIT Press]], ISBN: 9780262013895

 

     - I learned a lot reading this. (RLM should read this!)

 

 * Things Micah should read

   

   - Wolpert Principles of development

   - A geneti switch Mark Ptashne

   - Lawrence the making of a fly

   - Frankel "Pattern Formation" (my type of book!)

 

 * Things rlm should read

   - The harmonic mind vol 1+2 smolenck + legendre

   

 * For fun

   - Time's Arrow ad Archemdedes's ???? (price)

     - a reasonable philisopher

   - was einstein right? (clifford will)

 

 * Everybody should know:

   - fundamental physics

     - classical mechanics

     - E & M

     - relativity

     - QM

   - mathemeatics

 

 

 - Bernard F Schultz "A first course in general relativity"

   - readable

   - not too heavy

   - you can just go through it...

   - minimal dependencies

 

 

 - Scott Aaronson "Quantum Computing since Democratus"

   - everything you might want to know about QM, w/ phiospphical

     outlook

 

 

 - Bible + friends

   - whether or not you believe it

   - read between the lines

   - discover what people were actually thinking

   - very interesting document

 

 - Stranger in a strange land 

 

 

 - radio amateur's handbook ARRL

   - /practical/ electronics book

   - done for 100 years

 

 - Radiotron Designer's handbook RCA, 4th edition

   - "I'm very interested in hi-fi."

 

 - Hackers, by Steven Levy

   - Accuracy is not to good - people's names are spelled wrong, for

     example. 

   - But the /feelings/ are exactly right!

 

 * From house interview

 

   - Network Theory, Bose + Stevens

     - beautiful, best book. 

     - obsolete, only linear 

     - get the real story about RLC circuits

 

   - Linear and nonlinear circuits, Chua Sesoler kuh

     - more up-to-date than /Network Theory/

     - 10/10 would teach

     - mathematically very clear

 

   - "Art of electronics practice" horowitz & hill

     - practical

 

   - Grey + meyer (2nd or 3rd) edition "analysis and design of analogue

     and integrated circuits"

 

   - A survey of modern algebra Birkhoff + macland

     - all the wau to gaoias theory

     - clear

 

   - Visual Complex Analusis, Needham

     - Easy reading, well written

 

   - Solid shape, Jan Koenderink

     - just good

 

   - Probability: the Logic of Science, Jaynes

 

   - Calculus on Manifolds, Spivak

     - great notation, inspiration for SICM

     - great flame

 

   - Variational Princ. Mech. Lanczos 

     - very phisolic

     - deep

     - read 100 times, learn something new each time

     

   - Mermin, Space and time in special relativity

     - can be read by H.S. student

     - will change your life

     - you will understand special relativity!

 

   - faynman lectures

     - learn something

     - understandable

 

 

 * Marvin Minsky 

   Minsky really made me as a person. He was my advisor when I was a

   student at MIT, and he got me my first job. He had the "magnetisim"

   to attract the most talented people to MIT to work on AI, and the

   right amount of negligence and delagaion to create an environment

   where people could thrive. He is certainly the reason that I was

   seduced into working on AI. Minsky has vast and deep Scientific

   knowledge -- he could walk into almost any class: Chemistry,

   Physics, Math, Computer Science, and teach the class without

   preparation!

 

   - http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/ : Much of Minsky's work is here,

     including his book, /The Emotion Machine/, and several essays and

     papers. Check it out!

   

   - [[http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/][Society of Mind]] Read it online! Each chapter of this book is a

     short, self-contained essay about the various

 

   - Music, Mind, and Meaning

     https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/MusicMindMeaning.html

     Minsky is one of a few living people who can /improvise/

     complicated Baroque era fugues. You can hear one of these

     improvisations here: http://aurellem.org/mmm/

 

   - [[http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/steps.html][Steps towards Artificial Intelligence]] Here, Minsky outlines how we

     might begin to build an AI. This is considered to be one of the

     founding papers of the field, along with Turing's "Computing

     Machinery and Intelligence" [[http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html][paper]].

 

   - Perceptrons, by Marvin Minsky

     - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/perceptrons][MIT Press]], ISBN: 9780262631112

     - Really good for "Math types."

     - Uses geometry for proving things. 

     - People unwisely consisdered it to kill off Neural Nets; In fact,

       it only shows the limitations of certain simple kinds of Neural

       Nets.

 

 * Representative Student Theses

   

   These are students where I played a large role in their

   education. Many of them represent compelling research directions

   that desperatly need to be extented by the next generation of

   researchers! As Minsky says, if you want to do something really new,

   go back to points in the past where there was a neat idea that never

   really caught on, and follow the path of that idea to see where it

   leads. A comprehensive list of all my student's works can be found

   at my [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/gjs.html][homepage]]. If you want to cite any of these papers, you can

   find bibtex citations here: [[./sussman-recs.bib]].

 

   In particular, here's two great ideas that seem extremely promising

   and have NOT been properly explored! You could be the first person

   to get them working!

 

   - Using Chaotic Systems to get unlimited measurement precision!

     - Two papers: 

       - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/5953][A Global Approach to Parameter Estimation of Chaotic Dynamical

         Systems]], by [[http://eas.caltech.edu/people/3209/profile][Athanassios G. Siapas]], 1992.

       - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7060][Paramater Estimation in Chaotic Systems]], by Elmer Hung, 1995.

     - No one put enough effort into seeing if it really worked.

     - Seems to allow for almost unlimited percision in measurement. 

     - Initial results look very promising, with a =13 order of

       magnitude= improvement in measurement precision in a simple

       experiment. 

     - You will win the Nobel Prize if you can get it to work, because

       you will revolutionize the way we do measurements. 

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12007][Towards Intelligent Structures: Active Control of Buckling]]

     - By [[http://www.berlinplace.com/][Andrew A. Berlin]], 1994

     - Achieves a 10 fold increase in strength by actively eliminating

       vibrational modes. 

     - Such a good idea; It's cool, short -- great!

     - No one's followed up on it!

   

   In historical order:

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6888][A System for Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge]]

     - By [[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/][Scott Elliot Fahlman]], 1977

     - Basically the reason that the Connection Machine was later

       invented.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/5679][The Connection Machine]]

     - By [[http://longnow.org/people/board/danny0/][Danny Hillis]], 1981

     - Beautiful thesis, though it doesn't tell you anything you can

       really /do/ today.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6948][A Circuit Grammar For Operational Amplifier Design]]

     - By Andrew Ressler, 1984

     - If you're an Electrical Engineering person.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6959][ONTIC: A Knowledge Representation System for Mathematics]]

     - By [[http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~dmcallester/][David A. McAllester]], 1987

     - Very hard, very deep.

     - You will need to know a lot of Math.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7025][KAM: Automatic Planning and Interpretation of Numerical

     Experiments Using Geometrical Methods]]

     - By Kenneth Man-Kam Yip, 1989

     - Coolest PhD thesis ever!

     - Solve problems using graphs.

     - So cool!

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80483][Botanical Computing: A Developmental Approach to Generating

     Interconnect Topologies on an Amorphous Computer]]

     - By [[http://sta.uwi.edu/pelican/60under60/dcoore.asp][Daniel Coore]], 1999

     - Interesting to programmers especially.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86667][Programmable Self-Assembly: Constructing Global Shape using

     Biologically-inspired Local Interactions and Origami Mathematics]]

     By [[http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rad/][Radhika Nagpal]], 2001

     - Also Interesting to programmers.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8228][Cellular Computation and Communications using Engineered Genetic

     Regulatory Networks]]

     - By [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rweiss/][Ron Weiss]], 2001

     - Third in a line of bio / amorphous computing papers which should

       be highly interesting to programmers.

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6082][An Algorithm for Bootstrapping Communications]] 

     - By Jake Beal, 2001

     - Seems like it could be "the right thing" for how modules in the

       brain learn to talk to each other.

     - Someone should expand on this work!

     - Also a PhD thesis from Beal on this: [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38483][Learning by Learning to

       Communicate]], 2007

 

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37913][Games, Puzzles, and Computation]]

     - By [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/][Robert Aubrey Hearn]], 2006.

       

   - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49525][Propagation Networks: A Flexible and Expressive Substrate for

     Computation]]

     - By [[http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/][Alexey Andreyevich Radul]], 2009

     - Is a completely new way to program computers.

     - Under active development. You can get the latest code [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/propagator.tar][here]].