books added 21 June

The following books have been added to the bibliography.

The Ashley book is a welcome addition to control of flight vehicles (Bryson; Blakelock): it’s got a lot more detail about the underlying dynamics. I have no idea when I bought it, but I eventually remembered that it was somewhere in my library, and was delighted to find its more detailed explanation – and excellent drawing – of the various coordinate systems in use for aircraft and missles. This is material which the control theory books assume you’ve seen in more detail.

The Ideals & Varieties book is an introductory text which I am working thru with a friend. The third author, O’Shea, is the author of a recent book on the Poincare conjecture which is what got me started on the geometry of surfaces.

The 3 mechanics books (Marion, Symon, and the Berkeley) were additional references (cf. Goldstein) for acceleration in rotating coordinate systems. I have listed the Berkeley text twice, for the same reason I list Schaum’s Outlines twice. I’ve always heard it called “the Berkeley mechanics book”, and that’s how I searched to see if it – and the rest of the series – were in print (no) and available used (yes).

I bought the Basilevsky Factor Analysis book because I wanted something more about noise in factor analysis methods (cf. Malinowski). It looks like a good and interesting book (I wasn’t expecting to find the Kalman filter in it), although it is the specific text in which I found the mistaken assertion that we could always choose the eigenvector matrix orthogonal. As I said when I corrected that very same careless error on one of my own SVD pages, I am inclined to be tolerant of other people’s mistakes: I make mistakes, too.

Ashley, Holt. Engineering Analysis of Flight Vehicles Dover 1992 (1974).
ISBN 0 486 67213 1
[aeronautical engineering; 21 June 2008]
This has more detail about the coordinate systems. It includes rocket launches and re-entry into the atmosphere.

Basilevsky, Alexander; Statistical Factor Analysis and Related Methods. Wiley-Interscience, 1994.
ISBN 0 471 57082 6
[multivariate statistics, factor analysis, principal components, time series; 21 June 2008]
I’ve only skimmed this book. It looks like an attempt to apply modern statistical analysis to factor analysis and principal components. I was hoping it would provide some background for Makinowski’s treatment of noise in factor analysis, and I think it will.

Berkeley Physics Course – Volume 1: Mechanics Kittel, Charles; Knight, Walter; Ruderman, Malvin A. McGraw Hill, 1965.
[physics, mechanics; 21 June 2008]
This freshman text has a fair bit of math in it. In particular, it has the vector equation for acceleration in fixed and rotating frames, for which all of my other references are upper-division books. In general, I look in here for good examples.

Cox, David; Little, John; O’Shea, Donal. Ideals, Varieties, and Algorithms Springer, 1992.
ISBN 0 387 97847 X
[algebraic geometry; 21 June 2008]
An upper division introduction. I bought it because I didn’t know what a Groebner basis was. There is a 3rd edition, but I have heard that there are many typos, although errata are available.

Kittel, Charles; Knight, Walter; Ruderman, Malvin A. Mechanics (Berkeley Physics Course – Volume 1) McGraw Hill, 1965.
[physics, mechanics; 21 June 2008]
This freshman text has a fair bit of math in it. In particular, it has the vector equation for acceleration in fixed and rotating frames, for which all of my other references are upper-division books. In general, I look in here for good examples.

Marion, Jerry B. Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems. Academic Press, 1965.
[physics, classical mechanics; 21 June 2008]
There is a 5th edition; it’s not cheap. I used this as my reference for vectors when I was an undergraduate.

Symon, Keith R. Mechanics Addison Wesley, 1960.
[physics, classical mechanics; 21 June 2008]
There is a 3rd edition; it’s not cheap. I must have acquired this from a friend: I had forgotten about it. Judging from his treatment of acceleration in fixed and rotating frames, he’s a good alternative to Goldstein.