The Art of Insight: Mastering Complexity in Science and Engineering
The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering – Mastering Complexity(2014) [pdf]
I show you how to master the overwhelming complexity of science and engineering by prioritizing insight over rigid precision. Instead of drowning in details, I teach you to organize problems using divide-and-conquer and abstraction, or to discard unnecessary information through symmetry, dimensional analysis, and lumping. With minimal mathematics, you will learn to approximate effectively, turning chaotic systems into clear, understandable pictures that fit within your mind.
We need insight because our minds are but a small part of the world, and precision can overflow our mental registers, washing away the understanding brought by insight.
- sinuhe69
In this book, Sanjoy Mahajan shows us that the way to master complexity is through insight rather than precision. Precision can overwhelm us with information, whereas insight connects seemingly disparate pieces of information into a simple picture. Unlike computers, humans depend on insight. Based on the author’s fifteen years of teaching at MIT, Cambridge University, and Olin College, The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering shows us how to build insight and find understanding, giving readers tools to help them solve any problem in science and engineering. (Description courtesy of MIT Press.)
- rramadass
A complementary book to the above;
The Delicate Art of Brute Force: How to Compute It When You Can't Solve It by Paul Nahin - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691267463/th...
- poppingtonic
Street Fighting Mathematics! Loved taking this Sanjoy Mahajan's course on OCW in high school