Not sure if this is related to your search for one true textbook, but at some point I found the following error in planning my own self-education. Working through a textbook on an unfamiliar subject is hard, so it looked important to pick a text that covers the right topics, and includes all the right topics, so that I wouldn’t be forced to redundantly work through another large text after that. But contrast that impression with reading a 600pp fiction novel! A textbook on a topic you already mostly know is very skimmable, even carefully reading through it without doing the exercises is fast. Conversely, working through a text that can in principle be understood but for which you lack fluency is like learning a new language by picking up a large novel (you won’t even rightly know what it’s about!) and going through it word by word with a dictionary.
Thus smaller texts whose scope doesn’t extend too much outside of what you wish to know are initially more useful than large texts that inevitably have too much extra stuff. This includes piecemeal sources like wiki pages, tutorials, disparate video lectures on youtube, etc. Conversely, once you already know most of what a large text offers, you can pick out the unfamiliar parts you might be interested in and effectively study them, or read through everything to shore up gaps in your knowledge with relative ease, even if it’s a 1800pp multi-volume monstrosity. (This assumes that you are not urgently studying for a qualification challenge, when there won’t be time to gradually accumulate fluency with a topic.)
Somehow, in the end, what matters to me is that in the course of learning:
[order] notions and their dependencies are introduced in a topological-sorted manner. Be it through multiple small or large texts, or all together in a fat book.
[redundancy] having to read/skim the same notion the least amount of times.
I’ve had trouble finding small piecemeal contents that do not require a whole lot of background knowledge to be understood.
Large, comprehensive texts, my thought was, have lower such risks. And I agree that the bigger the piece, the higher the redundancy risk.
Well, my point was that redundancy is not actually a problem because fluency robs it of tedium. So if you see it as a major issue, it’s inaccurate to say that you agree.
Not sure if this is related to your search for one true textbook, but at some point I found the following error in planning my own self-education. Working through a textbook on an unfamiliar subject is hard, so it looked important to pick a text that covers the right topics, and includes all the right topics, so that I wouldn’t be forced to redundantly work through another large text after that. But contrast that impression with reading a 600pp fiction novel! A textbook on a topic you already mostly know is very skimmable, even carefully reading through it without doing the exercises is fast. Conversely, working through a text that can in principle be understood but for which you lack fluency is like learning a new language by picking up a large novel (you won’t even rightly know what it’s about!) and going through it word by word with a dictionary.
Thus smaller texts whose scope doesn’t extend too much outside of what you wish to know are initially more useful than large texts that inevitably have too much extra stuff. This includes piecemeal sources like wiki pages, tutorials, disparate video lectures on youtube, etc. Conversely, once you already know most of what a large text offers, you can pick out the unfamiliar parts you might be interested in and effectively study them, or read through everything to shore up gaps in your knowledge with relative ease, even if it’s a 1800pp multi-volume monstrosity. (This assumes that you are not urgently studying for a qualification challenge, when there won’t be time to gradually accumulate fluency with a topic.)
I agree with you.
Somehow, in the end, what matters to me is that in the course of learning:
[order] notions and their dependencies are introduced in a topological-sorted manner. Be it through multiple small or large texts, or all together in a fat book.
[redundancy] having to read/skim the same notion the least amount of times.
I’ve had trouble finding small piecemeal contents that do not require a whole lot of background knowledge to be understood.
Large, comprehensive texts, my thought was, have lower such risks. And I agree that the bigger the piece, the higher the redundancy risk.
Well, my point was that redundancy is not actually a problem because fluency robs it of tedium. So if you see it as a major issue, it’s inaccurate to say that you agree.
Yes, you are right. I was being a bit flexible saying that I agreed. I only partially agree. I may be too conflict averse.