The art of insight in science and engineering

What Hacker News says

1. terminalbraidDec 2024
   MIT OCW has a free textbook "The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity", which I usually point folks to on the subject of estimating physical systems. I think this is a real gem. Another work of the author is referenced at the bottom of the article. I'll also vouch for the referenced Guesstimation (though I hate the title).

   https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/res-6-011-the-art-of-insight-in-...

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2. vasily-22Dec 2022
   "The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering"

   https://books.google.bg/books/about/The_Art_of_Insight_in_Sc...

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3. 532nmSep 2022
   "The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity" by Sanjoy Mahajan.

   It beautifully treats estimation and problem solving techniques, illustrated by examples from science and engineering. Instead of aiming for a complete, thorough and accurate treatment of problems, its goal is to teach shortcuts to sacrifice some accuracy for much reduced effort. This is a refreshing change to academia where rigor is often pursued at all cost. But in the real world rigor rarely matter, and simplifications are almost always worthwhile, especially initially since we can always refine models if required.

   I first read it as an undergraduate and use the estimation and problem solving techniques from it almost daily. Though well hidden, the pdf is available for free on the website of the publisher.

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4. projectileboyNov 2020
   Street Fighting Mathematics, and The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering, both by Sanjoy Mahajan. You can find the PDFs online.
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5. rsaarelmJul 2020
   Sanjoy Mahajan's The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering (available online, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-insight-science-and-engin...). Takes a very pragmatic look to doing mathematics, while not pulling many punches on how advanced the mathematics gets. Would have appreciated this a lot, math books are usually split into dry theory where you have to already know math to be able to properly read them and books that are simplified to death for people who are forced to study math and don't want to.

   Tim Gowers' Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction is a popular book on doing mathematics. Not a textbook that teaches you mathematics, so wouldn't give this as the only book, but popular "what's the field like" books could be very interesting to a high schooler.

   Also, not suitable for the only book, Penrose's The Road to Reality. It gets very advanced and probably can't be fully tackled without additional mathematical education, but it tries to be an honest exposition of the math needed for modern physics from the ground up without explicitly resorting to external knowledge. I would have loved a "this will teach you all of the math if you can get through it" book like this even if I never did manage to get through it.

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6. knzhouApr 2020
   To evaluate stuff like this, you just need basic physics knowledge (enough to do dimensional analysis with) and estimation skills. One fun read along these lines is "The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering".

   For stuff like the bad social science you mentioned, often you can catch it if you know basic statistics along with the common tricks people use to p-hack. See, for example, "The garden of forking paths" by Gelman.

   Even if the statistical analysis is not given explicitly, or the issue is more subtle, for social science that touches on everyday life, you can usually tell if it'll hold up just with common sense. Try yourself using this quiz: https://80000hours.org/psychology-replication-quiz/

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