Looking for suggestions

[James Black]

Being on break for the summer, with little to do and no real summer project to keep me occupied, I figured I'd do something productive for a change. I want to learn something new. Thing is, I don't have many ideas of what to learn.

I'm looking for something that I can easily find online resources (free online tutorials, courses, ebooks, etc) to do on my own.

Mathematically, I know algebra, geometry, and some trig.
As far as sciences go, I'm pretty much at a loss for everything not dealing with computer science.
And I only speak English (with some remnants of once-studied French and Japanese)

So far, possible choices are Trig/Calc, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Logic, "Philosophy," Sociology, Psychology, etc.

Languages (Latin, Japanese, Russian, etc) are welcome suggestions if you believe a decent effort can result in a gratifying jump of knowledge or improved learning/logic within 2 to 3 months.

I'm open to any ideas, or any suggestions for where I can find resources.

 

[Jill BioSkop]

Declaration of interests: I'm a biology major, and obviously biased.

Genetics, meaning how DNA is organised (as a molecule packaged very small and as information with an internal 'grammar' and structure), and then how genes are expressed to build proteins, is quite interesting.

You can then go on to proteins being made and interacting with things (chemicals, or other proteins), which leads to how cells obtain chemical energy, via photosynthesis using chloroplasts and from sugars using mitochondria, and ultimately to studying how organisms work as a whole.

Or you can look up genetic investigation (which gene does what, what happens if this gene doesn't work? It's basically tinkering.^^) and go into genetic manipulation techniques, cloning, genetically modified organisms, and maybe developmental biology, which is the study of how genes interact to mould a complete multicellular organism (eg: a fly, a human) from one actively dividing cell.

I'd be careful about unverified online sources of biological knowledge, if you want reliable digestible information your best bet is the "review" type of scientific articles from journals (generalists for a field eg: Nature, which covers biology; or specialists, such as Genetics or the Journal of Developmental Biology, which cover a more restricted part of a field). BY reliable, I mean information accepted as true by the scientific community. Journal articles are checked for consistancy and quality of experiments and deductions by other researchers in the same field before being accepted for publication.

Most famous generalists biology-wise (that I know of):
http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/

You can use databases to search online literature more efficiently. Google Scholar (UK) is not bad, as is the Web of Knowledge (http://wok.mimas.ac.uk.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/).

 

[EditorOne]

1. Learn how to fish
2. Go fishing. It is an acceptable summer activity. Plus you get fresh air, exercise and dinner.

 

[Adamastor]

If you have some knowledge with some programming language, I'd suggest you to read a little about AI, it is simply fascinating.

There is many online resources about it (Some introductory lessons in C programming forum), but more than the mechanical aspect of it, I am more interested in speculating about it, above all the heart of AI is "What is intelligence?".
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About mathematics, I did not take a good look at it, but there is something about fractals that sounds awesome.

Graph theory sounds cool too as a way of modeling things.
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About languages... Well, you could probably delve into some random author, but I found I think it is better if you keep your attention at how people express things with words... Personally, I have been interesting in how common text is different from poetry. I believe, for now, that expressing something in a literal way it is not practical, because there is just too many things to say, so there comes poetry, which can be too an art for itself...

Well, if you got interested in some of it, we could discuss sometime

 

[Da Blob]

Being on break for the summer, with little to do and no real summer project to keep me occupied, I figured I'd do something productive for a change. I want to learn something new. Thing is, I don't have many ideas of what to learn.

I'm looking for something that I can easily find online resources (free online tutorials, courses, ebooks, etc) to do on my own.

Mathematically, I know algebra, geometry, and some trig.
As far as sciences go, I'm pretty much at a loss for everything not dealing with computer science.
And I only speak English (with some remnants of once-studied French and Japanese)

So far, possible choices are Trig/Calc, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Logic, "Philosophy," Sociology, Psychology, etc.

Languages (Latin, Japanese, Russian, etc) are welcome suggestions if you believe a decent effort can result in a gratifying jump of knowledge or improved learning/logic within 2 to 3 months.

I'm open to any ideas, or any suggestions for where I can find resources.

Following up on Editor One's comment - might i suggest that you learn to Do something new, as opposed to just adding to the encyclopedia of personal knowledge? Dewey was correct, the fundamental means of learning is via actions and doing new activities. Even if it is just a new mental activity it seems as though any new methods or techniques learned can be applied to a broader range than the initial purpose. For example, i have set myself to the task of producing youtube videos, I certainly am not very good at it yet, but for someone of my age, it has opened up a realm of knowledge which i had never investigated prior to this effort...

 

[James Black]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to consider other activities, as suggested. Fishing is one thing I enjoy, tbh, and wish I did a bit more of. As for biology/genetics, it sounds interesting, and something I definitely have to look into.

And to Adamastor: my major is programming, so AI is definitely something I need to look into, but I think I want to explore other areas that I haven't looked into yet.

 

[Vrecknidj]

I'm with EditorOne. I suggest finding something to do that is not traditionally an INTP thing. Fishing was a good suggestion, but so are other things. Create a garden. Go bird watching.

Dave

 

[Jill BioSkop]

Swimming, running, drawing?

 

[walfin]

Actually fishing sounds quite an INTP hobby to me.

 

[Oblivious]

Pick up a musical instrument. Guitar instantly makes you awesome... once you become good at it.

 

[Latro]

In that I am currently doing partial differential equations, I am also biased, and would favor starting to work on calculus and linear algebra. Within a summer of hard work you could probably be though one var calc and elementary linear algebra. If you liked it you would then do multivar calc, elementary ordinary differential equations, and a little advanced linear algebra. Then you can start PDEs, which are looking like they will be awesome.

This would be a more-than-just-a-summer endeavor, though. For just the summer my biases are:
Garden
Read for pleasure (Italo Calvino is my current author of choice)
Screw around with CS (projecteuler.net is a great site for this).
Learn a conlang (Lojban for example.
.i da'i ganai do tadni la lojban. gi .e'o va'o lo pa re'u te kakne ko lojbo tavla mi .i mi djica lonu mi tavla za'u lo prenu)

 

[AlisaD]

Go outside. Sit in the sun. Have lots of sex (since you know trigonometry I'll assume you're old enough to, though you can never be sure, can you?) Try not to learn or be productive.

Productivity sucks. Long live the slackers

 

[s0nystyle]

try some volley ball or tennis (it IS summer). get our there and be somebody

 

[James Black]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I assure you all that I intend to (and have done so already) go outside this summer whether just for sports, swimming, walking, biking or other leisurely activities.

Another question, however: as far as languages go, if I wanted to learn something that would change the way I think/learn, which would be suggested? Lojban (interesting to see Latro mentioned this. I thought it was a very rarely known-of language) and Latin are my current thoughts, but I don't know which one would be most beneficial.

 

[Latro]

I've worked with both of those. Latin's big wall for beginners is breaking free of word order as the deciding factor of a sentence's meaning. (Latin uses word endings to decide the vast majority of its grammar). Lojban's big wall for beginners is breaking free of the conventional ideas of noun, verb, etc. (it has equivalents but they are far from direct equivalents). They both have benefits in that area, I think, but then I'm biased (I've only studied these and Spanish).

If you take up Lojban, though, may I direct you to {pe'a lo zdani be lo jbopre} in the Club Club? *hint hint nudge nudge*