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1 #+title: Prof. Sussman's Reading List
2 #+author: Gerald Sussman (compiled by Robert McIntyre)
3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
4 #+description: Professor Sussman's reading recommendations
5 #+keywords: sussman physics computer science reading list MIT
6 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
7 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
8 #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both
10 Serving as a TA for Professor Sussman will get you three things: gread
11 advice, spectacular reading recommendataions, and lots of high quality
12 tea. I can't share the advice or the tea, but I can compile a reading
13 list. Some of the materials on this represent research paths that lead
14 to unexplored terrority. Some are textbooks that express concepts so
15 clearly they will change your life and make you weep for joy. I hope
16 that you will get something interesting out of this reading list,
17 wherever you are in life -- there's stuff I wish I knew about in
18 middle school, and there are things I can't wait to read this
19 summer. Enjoy! (and send corrections to reading-list@aurellem.org!)
21 If you want to cite any of these papers, [[./sussman-recs.bib][here]] is a bibtex format file
22 that contains all of these papers in the order they appear on the
23 page. ([[./sussman-recs.bib]]).
25 * From Sussman's Bookshelf:
27 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Network-Theory-Amar-Bose/dp/B0000CMXS1][Introductory Network Theory]], by A.G. Bose and K.N. Stevens
28 - ASIN: B0000CMXS1
29 - Get the real story about RLC circuits!
30 - Obsolete -- it only covers linear circuits.
32 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Nonlinear-Circuits-Leon-Chua/dp/0070108986][Linear and Nonlinear Circuits]], by Chua, Desoler, and Kuh
33 - ISBN: 0070108986
34 - More up-to-date than /Network Theory/
35 - 10/10 would teach
36 - Mathematically very clear
38 - [[http://frank.harvard.edu/aoe/][The Art of Electronics]], by Horowitz & Hill
39 - ASIN: B001ERDQVI
40 - Practical
41 - Beautiful
43 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Design-Analog-Integrated-Circuits/dp/0471574953/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401819423&sr=1-1&keywords=Analysis+and+Design+of+Analog+Integrated+Circuits+3rd+edition][Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits]], by Grey and
44 Meyer
45 - ISBN: 0471574953
46 - Get the 2nd or 3rd edition, not later ones.
48 - [[http://www.maa.org/publications/maa-reviews/a-survey-of-modern-algebra][A Survey of Modern Algebra]], by Garrett Birkhoff and Saunders
49 MacLane
50 - ISBN: 9781568814544
51 - Goes all the wau to Galois Theory!
52 - Clear!
54 - [[http://usf.usfca.edu/vca//][Visual Complex Analysis]], Needham
55 - ISBN: 0198534469
56 - Easy reading, well written
57 - Wonderful use of graphics!
59 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/solid-shape][Solid Shape]], Jan Koenderink
60 - ISBN: 026211139X
61 - Just good!
63 - [[http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/theoretical-physics-and-mathematical-physics/probability-theory-logic-science][Probability: the Logic of Science]], by E.T. Jaynes
64 - ISBN: 9780521592710
65 - OMG just read this already!
66 - Here's [[http://www-biba.inrialpes.fr/Jaynes/prob.html][some]] [[http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html][links]] to the book.
67 - This book will change your life, and make probability make
68 sense. Truly excellent book.
69 - Why aren't you reading this!?
71 - [[http://www.perseusacademic.com/book.php?isbn=0805390219][Calculus on Manifolds]], Spivak
72 - ISBN: 9780805390216
73 - Great Mathematical notation!
74 - Was an inspiration for [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/book.html][SICM]].
75 - Book contains a great flame!
77 - [[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1258635.The_Variational_Principles_of_Mechanics][The Variational Principles of Mechanics]], by Cornelius Lanczos
78 - ISBN: 0486650677
79 - Very philosophic; deep.
80 - You could read it 100 times and learn something new each time!
82 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computers-and-thought][Computers and Thought]], by Edward A. Feigenbaum (Editor), Julian
83 Feldman (Editor).
84 - ISBN: 0262560925
85 This book includes some of the very interesting early papers in
86 AI, and is overall a great book. Of course, some of the included
87 papers are not very interesting.
89 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/configuration-space-method-kinematic-design-mechanisms][The Configuration Space Method for Kinematic Design of Mechanisms]],
90 by Elisha Sacks and Leo Joskowicz
91 - ISBN: 9780262013895
92 - I learned a lot reading this. (RLM should read this!)
94 - [[http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199549078.do][Principles of Development]], by Wolpert
95 - ISBN: 0199554285
97 - [[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1547380.A_Genetic_Switch][A Genetic Switch]], by Mark Ptashne
98 - ISBN: 0865423156
99 - Such clarity!
100 - [[http://www.mskcc.org/research/lab/mark-ptashne/genetic-switch-lecture-series][Lecture Series Based on the book!]]
102 - [[http://making-of-a-fly.me/][The Making of a Fly]], by Peter A. Lawrence
103 - ISBN: 0632030488
104 - Probably out of date already, but very well written!
106 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Formation-Ciliate-Studies-Models/dp/0195048903][Pattern Formation: Ciliate Studies and Models]], by Joseph Frankel
107 - ISBN: 0195048903
108 - My type of book!
110 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/harmonic-mind][The Harmonic Mind]], Volumes 1 and 2, by Smolenck and Legendre
111 - ISBN: 9780262516198
112 - I'm very interested in the amazing latency of the human
113 brain. This book presents a way by which multiple stages of
114 computation can be folded together into a single computation,
115 and is an interesting hypothesis about how the mind might work!
117 - [[http://www.arrl.org/shop/ARRL-Handbook-2013-Hardcover-Edition][The Radio Amateur's Handbook]], [[http://www.arrl.org/][ARRL]]
118 - /practical/ electronics book
119 - They've been making this book for about 100 years!
121 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Radiotron-Langford-Smith-Reproduced-Distributed-Corporation/dp/B000JILVH4][Radiotron Designer's Handbook, 4th edition, RCA]]
122 - ASIN: B000JILVH4
123 - I'm very interested in hi-fi.
125 * Marvin Minsky
126 Minsky really made me as a person. He was my advisor when I was a
127 student at MIT, and he got me my first job. He had the "magnetisim"
128 to attract the most talented people to MIT to work on AI, and the
129 right amount of negligence and delagaion to create an environment
130 where people could thrive. He is certainly the reason that I was
131 seduced into working on AI. Minsky has vast and deep Scientific
132 knowledge -- he could walk into almost any class: Chemistry,
133 Physics, Math, Computer Science, and teach the class without
134 preparation!
136 - http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/ Much of Minsky's work is here,
137 including his book, /The Emotion Machine/, and several essays and
138 papers. Check it out!
140 - [[http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/][Society of Mind]] Read it online! Each chapter of this book is a
141 short, self-contained essay about the various
143 - [[https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/MusicMindMeaning.html][Music, Mind, and Meaning]] Minsky is one of a few living people who
144 can /improvise/ complicated Baroque era fugues. You can hear one
145 of these improvisations [[http://aurellem.org/mmm/][here]].
147 - [[http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/steps.html][Steps towards Artificial Intelligence]] Here, Minsky outlines how we
148 might begin to build an AI. This is considered to be one of the
149 founding papers of the field, along with Turing's "Computing
150 Machinery and Intelligence" [[http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html][paper]].
152 - Perceptrons, by Marvin Minsky
153 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/perceptrons][MIT Press]], ISBN: 9780262631112
154 - Really good for "Math types."
155 - Uses geometry for proving things.
156 - People unwisely consisdered it to kill off Neural Nets; In fact,
157 it only shows the limitations of certain simple kinds of Neural
158 Nets.
160 * Representative Student Theses
162 These are students where I played a large role in their
163 education. Many of them represent compelling research directions
164 that desperatly need to be extented by the next generation of
165 researchers! As Minsky says, if you want to do something really new,
166 go back to points in the past where there was a neat idea that never
167 really caught on, and follow the path of that idea to see where it
168 leads. A comprehensive list of all my student's works can be found
169 at my [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/gjs.html][homepage]]. If you want to cite any of these papers, you can
170 find bibtex citations here: [[./sussman-recs.bib]].
172 In particular, here's two great ideas that seem extremely promising
173 and have NOT been properly explored! You could be the first person
174 to get them working!
176 - Using Chaotic Systems to get unlimited measurement precision!
177 - Two papers:
178 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/5953][A Global Approach to Parameter Estimation of Chaotic Dynamical
179 Systems]], by [[http://eas.caltech.edu/people/3209/profile][Athanassios G. Siapas]], 1992.
180 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7060][Paramater Estimation in Chaotic Systems]], by Elmer Hung, 1995.
181 - No one put enough effort into seeing if it really worked.
182 - Seems to allow for almost unlimited percision in measurement.
183 - Initial results look very promising, with a =13 order of
184 magnitude= improvement in measurement precision in a simple
185 experiment.
186 - You will win the Nobel Prize if you can get it to work, because
187 you will revolutionize the way we do measurements.
189 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12007][Towards Intelligent Structures: Active Control of Buckling]]
190 - By [[http://www.berlinplace.com/][Andrew A. Berlin]], 1994
191 - Achieves a 10 fold increase in strength by actively eliminating
192 vibrational modes.
193 - Such a good idea; It's cool, short -- great!
194 - No one's followed up on it!
196 In historical order:
198 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6888][A System for Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge]]
199 - By [[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/][Scott Elliot Fahlman]], 1977
200 - Basically the reason that the Connection Machine was later
201 invented.
203 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/5679][The Connection Machine]]
204 - By [[http://longnow.org/people/board/danny0/][Danny Hillis]], 1981
205 - Beautiful thesis, though it doesn't tell you anything you can
206 really /do/ today.
208 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6948][A Circuit Grammar For Operational Amplifier Design]]
209 - By Andrew Ressler, 1984
210 - If you're an Electrical Engineering person.
212 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6959][ONTIC: A Knowledge Representation System for Mathematics]]
213 - By [[http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~dmcallester/][David A. McAllester]], 1987
214 - Very hard, very deep.
215 - You will need to know a lot of Math.
217 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7025][KAM: Automatic Planning and Interpretation of Numerical
218 Experiments Using Geometrical Methods]]
219 - By Kenneth Man-Kam Yip, 1989
220 - Coolest PhD thesis ever!
221 - Solve problems using graphs.
222 - So cool!
224 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80483][Botanical Computing: A Developmental Approach to Generating
225 Interconnect Topologies on an Amorphous Computer]]
226 - By [[http://sta.uwi.edu/pelican/60under60/dcoore.asp][Daniel Coore]], 1999
227 - Interesting to programmers especially.
229 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86667][Programmable Self-Assembly: Constructing Global Shape using
230 Biologically-inspired Local Interactions and Origami Mathematics]]
231 By [[http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rad/][Radhika Nagpal]], 2001
232 - Also Interesting to programmers.
234 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8228][Cellular Computation and Communications using Engineered Genetic
235 Regulatory Networks]]
236 - By [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rweiss/][Ron Weiss]], 2001
237 - Third in a line of bio / amorphous computing papers which should
238 be highly interesting to programmers.
240 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/6082][An Algorithm for Bootstrapping Communications]]
241 - By Jake Beal, 2001
242 - Seems like it could be "the right thing" for how modules in the
243 brain learn to talk to each other.
244 - Someone should expand on this work!
245 - Also a PhD thesis from Beal on this: [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38483][Learning by Learning to
246 Communicate]], 2007
248 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37913][Games, Puzzles, and Computation]]
249 - By [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/][Robert Aubrey Hearn]], 2006.
251 - [[http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49525][Propagation Networks: A Flexible and Expressive Substrate for
252 Computation]]
253 - By [[http://web.mit.edu/~axch/www/][Alexey Andreyevich Radul]], 2009
254 - Is a completely new way to program computers.
255 - Under active development. You can get the latest code [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/propagator.tar][here]].
257 * Some /Real/ Highschool Reading
259 - [[http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/cosmology-relativity-and-gravitation/first-course-general-relativity][A First Course in General Relativity]], by Bernard F Schultz
260 - ISBN: 9780521277037
261 - Readable, not too heavy.
262 - Minimal dependencies
263 - You can just go through it slowly and understand at each step.
265 - [[http://www.amazon.com/Space-Special-Relativity-David-Mermin/dp/0881334200][Space and Time in Special Relativity]], by [[http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/mermin/][David Mermin]]
266 - ISBN: 0881334200
267 - HIGHLY accessible.
268 - This will change your life.
269 - You will understand special relativity!
271 - [[http://www.feynmanlectures.info/][The Feynman Lectures on Physics]]
272 - Highly understandable
273 - Just go there and learn something already!
275 - [[http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/][Society of Mind]], by [[http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/][Marvin Minsky]]
276 - A trove of wonderful ideas!
278 - [[http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/discountpromotion/?site_locale=en_US&code=L3QCSD][Quantum Computing since Democratus]], by [[http://www.scottaaronson.com/][Scott Aaronson]]
279 - Everything you might want to know about computing with QM, with
280 a philosophical outlook.
282 - Bible, Talmud, Koran
283 - Read them whether or not you believe them!
284 - Be sure to read between the lines, and you can discover what
285 people were actually thinking back then.
286 - Very interesting documents!
287 - [[http://jhom.com/topics/voice/bat_kol_bab.htm][Bava Metzia 59b]] is an interesting story!
290 * Selected works by Sussman
292 - [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/book.html][SICM (Structure and Interpreation of Classical Mechanics)]] This is
293 the textbook of [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/][6.946]], a class in Classical Mechanics that Sussman
294 generally teaches in the Fall.
295 - ISBN: 9780262194556
296 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-classical-mechanics][MIT Press]]
298 - [[http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/][SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)]] This is
299 the textbook of the (no longer offered) [[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/][6.001]] introductory
300 Computer Science class at MIT. It's a classic!
301 - ISBN: 0-262-01077-1
303 - [[http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/][R5RS (Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme)]]
304 Spec. for the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language%29][scheme]] computer language. Sussman is very proud of
305 the short length of this document comparted to the specifications
306 for most other computer languages. It's based on the [[http://www.masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm][Revised
307 Report on the Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60]]
309 - [[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/calculus-indexed.pdf][Functional Differential Geometry]] Treatment of functional
310 differential geometry in the classic SIC[M/P] style.
312 * For Fun
313 - [[http://prce.hu/w/TAAP.html][Time's Arrow and Archemdedes' Point]], by Huw Price
314 - ISBN: 0195117980
315 - A reasonable philisopher!
317 - [[http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~cmw/wer.html][Was Einstein Right? : Putting General Relativity To The Test]], by
318 Clifford M. Will
319 - ISBN: 0465090869
321 - [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land][Stranger in a Strange Land]], by Robert A. Heinlein
322 - ISBN: 0441790348
324 - [[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/729][Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution]], by Steven Levy
325 - ISBN: 1449388396
326 - Accuracy is not too good - people's names are spelled wrong, for
327 example.
328 - But the /feelings/ are exactly right! This book really captures
329 what it was like to be in the AI lab back in the good old days.