Sometimes two textbooks on the exact same topic serve completely different purposes. There are “I want to learn this thing I don’t know” textbooks, and there are “I am an expert but I still want this book on hand as a tool to help me with my experting”. Below I describe the most extreme examples I am aware of, which are unfortunately on different topics:
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Strogatz is incredibly readable. You can sit with it on a train and read non-stop without needing to look anything up and you will keep wanting to relate the next amazing thing you have learned to the poor stranger sat next to you. You emerge from it with a new conceptual framework, and then you never look at it again because if their is ever a detail or issue you can’t remember this book is the wrong place to check it.
Statistical Methods in Quantum Optics by Carmichael is a fantastic book. But, if you are new to the topic of quantum optics you should NOT touch it at all. It is an almost useless teaching aide. If you can’t remember whether the quantum regression theorem is dependent on the Markovian, Born or Secular approximations then this is the book for you. If you don’t know what any of those things are and want to find out then stay away! Find something else.
The same book cannot be ideal at both, their is a trade-off in optimising towards these two objectives.
Sometimes two textbooks on the exact same topic serve completely different purposes. There are “I want to learn this thing I don’t know” textbooks, and there are “I am an expert but I still want this book on hand as a tool to help me with my experting”. Below I describe the most extreme examples I am aware of, which are unfortunately on different topics:
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Strogatz is incredibly readable. You can sit with it on a train and read non-stop without needing to look anything up and you will keep wanting to relate the next amazing thing you have learned to the poor stranger sat next to you. You emerge from it with a new conceptual framework, and then you never look at it again because if their is ever a detail or issue you can’t remember this book is the wrong place to check it.
Statistical Methods in Quantum Optics by Carmichael is a fantastic book. But, if you are new to the topic of quantum optics you should NOT touch it at all. It is an almost useless teaching aide. If you can’t remember whether the quantum regression theorem is dependent on the Markovian, Born or Secular approximations then this is the book for you. If you don’t know what any of those things are and want to find out then stay away! Find something else.
The same book cannot be ideal at both, their is a trade-off in optimising towards these two objectives.