11

Here, I am trying to collect as many "I wish I had read that textbook first" textbook names as possible, for as many different topics in mathematics as possible.

The "I wish I had read that textbook first" criterion is when you've already mastered some topic and in retrospect, you can see that "Textook X written by Y" is the best starting point in learning that topic, and most of your peers agree.

José Carlos Santos
  • 427,504
alex811
  • 340
  • 4
    @alex811: See: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/94827/what-books-must-every-math-undergraduate-read, https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/4026/deep-maths-books, https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/417167/mathematical-books, https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-mathematician-should-read/1550, https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/674257/most-useful-books-for-a-math-undergrad?rq=1, http://www.ams.org/notices/200510/comm-fowler.pdf, https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm – Moo Jan 31 '19 at 12:27

3 Answers3

1

I surely wish I has read Katsumi Nomizu' Fundamentals of Linear Algebra before any other textbook written about that subject.

José Carlos Santos
  • 427,504
1

I wish I had The Joy of Sets by Keith Devlin when l started learning set theory

I also wish I bought Croom’s Princples of Topology It is an excellent book.

0

For Gaussian processes, without a doubt the first text should be Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning by Rasmussen and Williams.

prdnr
  • 348