Thoroughly recommended: Hamming's book "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn"

Slightly rambling, and diving into differential equations a bit more than I like in my bedtime reading, it reveals the mind and soul of a true engineering genius.

http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...

Hamming, on how anyone can make a mistake:

  "I did not [discover] the FFT, though a book I had already published (1961) 
   shows I knew all the facts necessary, and could have done it easily! [...] 
   Think of my error! How much more stupid can anyone be?"

Thanks for that link.

The first "rule" in this paper contains a sentence that is strikingly similar to Elon Musk's advice on learning. I wonder if that is a coincidence?

From the linked paper: "when faced with new knowledge, try to establish nodal points in the knowledge network;"

Elon Musk's advice: "it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles" (via) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_...

Came here to say basically this (you beat me to it). Learning how to optimally learn is crucial if you're going to learn a lot, particularly if it will be across multiple disciplines.

This feels a little Buzzfeed-y for PLOS. But they'll publish whatever so long as it's not full of lies, and you pay, I suppose.

The entire book is excellent but I think the final chapter is really the best "You and Your Reseach"

"If you are to be leader into the future, rather than to be a follower of others, @it is necessary for you to look at the bigger picture on a regular, frequent basis for many years." - Hamming

(@) A little edit by me to remove some hedging.

There's a signal processing joke here... except I can never remember if the punchline is Hamming or Hanning.

The Hamming distance from '_Hanning' to 'Shannon_' is uh... 3!

Great article. Thanks for sharing. Are there any other books on the art of learning anyone would recommend?

shouldn't we be talking about scientists to global pop. and not just nominal number of scientists?