The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity (2014) [pdf]

[nrubin]

I took a version of this class (called The Art of Approximation) with Dr. Mahajan when he was a visiting professor at Olin College. The course helped me become fearless about tackling a broad range of math problems I knew little about, and has helped me in countless real life situations from financial planning to major work decisions.

Also, it's a great intro on good ways to nail PM interviews, at least at Google (where I now work, thanks in no small part to the lessons from this class).

If you have a spare few hours, read this book or take his classes on edX. It'll absolutely change your intuition for numbers.

[Aeolus98]

Oh cool. I'm actually in Olin now, and even better, taking his class as I type this post.

Art of approximation https://imgur.com/a/OvDzl

I'll pass along any cool questions.

[mathattack]

Thank you for sharing the first hand experience. When I see book pdfs posted here, my first question is "Did anyone actually read or go through this?"

Is it really just a few hours to go through it? :-)

[denzil_correa]

> it's a great intro on good ways to nail PM interviews, at least at Google (where I now work, thanks in no small part to the lessons from this class).

Could you give an example? It would be great to know why you say so.

[mfn]

If you don't mind me asking, any other resources you found useful for PM interviews?

[iamcreasy]

What class is that? Is any similar MOOC course available?

[ivansavz]

An earlier book from the same author: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics

[gk101]

In fact he has a course on edx for this: https://www.edx.org/course/street-fighting-math-mitx-6-sfmx

[clm]

I went to graduate school at Caltech; my time there intersected with SM for about a year, but I only learned about that when he had already graduated.

In one of the rooms in the physics building (E. Bridge), there used to be a few shelves with old theses. While checking them out one day (probably trying to kill time before a seminar), I came across Sanjoy's thesis. It was a curious little thing, unlike any of the other theses I had seen---a bit of a hybrid between a PhD thesis and a textbook, and remarkably, very readable.

That thesis was, apparently, the first version of his now famous book, Street-Fighting Mathematics. After getting lost in it for a while, I went and asked the administrative assistant if I could get a copy, and she said nobody cares about those volumes on the shelves, and I could just take it if I wanted. I still have that copy with me.

One year I attempted to audit the (somewhat legendary) class that the book part of SM's thesis was based on---"Order of magnitude physics", taught by P. Goldreich and S. Phinney. Unfortunately, the lectures were in the morning, and I managed to wake up early enough only a few times, and dropped out afterwards.

I continued to collect material on related topics over the years, and am still hoping to use them some day in a course, together with SM's books.

[sn9]

After a bit of Googling, I believe I have found a copy of this thesis [0].

[0] http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/thesis/thesis-lett...

[cJ0th]

What a great find! I didn't even dream of a book like this. Thank you for sharing!

[andrzejsz]

How come this book is available on download I mean what about copyright?

[detaro]

It's under a license that allows freely sharing it for non-commercial purposes.

[nxzero]

On the copyright page of the PDF of the book it states it is:

>> "licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International License."

[christouphair]

What are the prerequisites to understand this book? I feel very intimidated by some equations.

[sn9]

Comfort with freshman physics and math is really all that's required.

You can always review those first.

[geohump]

The irony of a an article claiming to master complexity while using one of the worst choices of information dissemination. PDF's. Palpable.

[danso]

Besides it being a book, not sure what the irony is here. PDF is a poor way to disseminate information via the web, but excellent for distributing information in a container that you envision as uniform and universal -- in this case, paper. The responsive variable nature of a browser window can sometimes do screwy things to a well planned layout.

[jasonkostempski]

Because it's a book, not an article.