HACKER Q&A
📣 leandot

Foundational Books


Hi, I am looking for examples of technical books that are relatively short but well-written and provide a strong foundation for their topics. Such an example for me is Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus. Do you have other examples - e.g. about forecasting, linear algebra, graphics, etc.


  👤 coderatlarge Accepted Answer ✓
F. A. Ficken - The Simplex Method of Linear Programming

👤 coderatlarge
K & R - The C programming language

👤 coderatlarge
A. I. Khinchin - Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory

👤 coderatlarge
Emil Artin - The Gamma Function

👤 coderatlarge
Emil Artin - Galois Theory

👤 coderatlarge
Spivak - Calculus on manifolds. Not my personal favorite, but it's short and super classic.

👤 coderatlarge
Friedman & Felleisen - The Little Schemer. The style doesn't work as well for me personally, but it's clearly very short and a popular way into the language and the way of thought.

👤 coderatlarge
Stroustrup - A Tour of C++. Getting a bit dated, but given how large the language has become over the decades, having a short synopsis can be quite valuable.

👤 coderatlarge
Milnor - Topology from the differentiable viewpoint. Super-brief classic.

👤 coderatlarge
Rudin - Principles of Mathematical Analysis (aka "baby rudin"). Not as short as the others, but worth the read.