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Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by mncharity on Sunday August 29, 2021 @08:27PM (#28351766)
A few days ago, someone expressed interest in finding content teaching what I think of as the "physics mindset". So not preparing for physics exams, or future classes. Nor building math skills, except incidentally. Nor of course learning about the physical world in its richness. But more, the art of... maybe call it system decomposition and approximation into, and playing with, simple models? They asked, and I didn't know of anything to suggest which has that as its focus. Any thoughts?
Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by jostylr on Monday August 30, 2021 @07:37AM (#28354619)
The book Guesstimation leads to a good very rough approximation mindset, both in terms of how one computes as well as understanding the innate roughness of an answer to a question. They may already be comfortable with that approach, but if, not, it is a very useful place to begin though it is more of a preparation for those ideas.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691129495/gu...

Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by quanto on Monday August 30, 2021 @01:15AM (#28352982)
Perhaps you could start from here:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics

The book attempts to combine approximations with first principles to get at a desired conclusion. These resulting approximations are surprisingly accurate. This kind of work (a more difficult variant of) is usually taught in the first year of graduate school.

Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by patrick451 on Monday August 30, 2021 @02:50AM (#28353300)
What might such a gradschool course be called? This seems like a useful thing to audit at the local university.
Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by quanto on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:28AM (#28457543)
In my case, it was called "Physical Mathematics." An advanced undergraduate course in mathematical modeling could cover some material mentioned here.
Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by coyotespike on Sunday August 29, 2021 @10:10PM (#28352222)
You could try "Thinking Physics," available from Amazon (or LibGen)

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Physics-Understandable-Pract...

Re:Programming, Math, Science: A list with links to useful r... by AQuantized on Sunday August 29, 2021 @09:59PM (#28352170)
I can't think of a better way than just learning physics. It's probably impossible to decouple learning something effectively from actively performing related activities, and the systems of the natural world are pretty good practice.