(Part 3) Top products from r/gatech

So, when I was younger, I did attend one computer science related camp,

https://www.idtech.com

They have a location at Emory (which I believe I did one year) that was ok (not nearly as "nerdy"), and one at Boston which I really enjoyed (perhaps because I had to sleep on site). That being said, the stuff I learned there was more in the areas of graphic design and/or system administration, and not computer science. They are also quite expensive for only 1-2 weeks of exposure.

I felt it was a good opportunity to meet some very smart kids though, and it definitely lead me to push myself. Knowing and talking to people that are purely interested in CS, and are your age, is quite rare in high school. I think that kind of perspective can make your interests and hobbies seem more normal and set a much higher bar for what you expect for yourself.

On the other side of things, I believe that one of the biggest skills in any college program is an openness to just figure something out yourself if it interests you, without someone sitting there with you. This can be very helpful in life in general, and I think was one of the biggest skills I was missing in high school. I remember tackling some tricky stuff when I was younger, but I definitely passed over stuff I was interested in just because I figured "thats for someone with a college degree". The fact is that experience will make certain tasks easier but you CAN learn anything you want. You just may have to learn more of the fundamentals behind it than someone with more experience.

With that in mind, I would personally suggest a couple of things which I think would be really useful to someone his age, give him a massive leg up over the average freshman when he does get to college, and be a lot more productive than a summer camp.

One would be to pick a code-golf site (I like http://www.codewars.com) and simply try to work through the challenges. Another, much more math heavy, option is https://projecteuler.net. This, IMO is one of the best ways to learn a language, and I will often go there to get familiar with the syntax of a new language. I think he should pick Python and Clojure (or Haskell) and do challenges in both. Python is Object Oriented, whilst Clojure (or Haskell) is Functional. These are two very fundamental and interesting "schools of thought" and if he can wrap his head around both at this age, that would be very valuable.

A second option, and how I really got into programming, is to do some sort of web application development. This is pretty light on the CS side of things, but it allows you to be creative and manage more complex projects. He could pick a web framework in Python (flask), Ruby (rails), or NodeJS. There are numerous tutorials on getting started with this stuff. For Flask: http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world. For Rails: https://www.railstutorial.org. This type of project could take a while, there are a lot of technologies which interact to make a web application, but the ability to be creative when designing the web pages can be a lot of fun.

A third, more systems level, option (which is probably a bit more opinionated on my part) is that he learn to use Linux. I would suggest that he install VirtualBox on his computer, https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. He can then install Linux in a virtual machine without messing up the existing OS (also works with Mac). He COULD install Ubuntu, but this is extremely easy and doesn't really teach much about the inner workings. I think he could install Arch. https://wiki.archlinux.org. This is a much more involved distribution to install, but their documentation is notoriously good, and it exposes you to a lot of command line (Ubuntu attempts to be almost exclusively graphical). From here, he should just try to use it as much as possible for his daily computing. He can learn general system management and Bash scripting. There should be tutorials for how to do just about anything he may want. Some more advanced stuff would be to configure a desktop environment, he could install Gnome by default, it is pretty easy, but a lot of people really get into this with more configurable ones ( https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn ). He could also learn to code and compile in C.

Fourth, if he likes C, he may like seeing some of the ways in which programs which are poorly written can be broken. A really fun "game" is https://io.smashthestack.org. He can log into a server and basically "hack" his way to different levels. This can also really expose you to how Linux maintains security (user permissions, etc. ). I think this would be much more involved approach, but if he is really curious about this stuff, I think this could be the way to go. In this similar vein, he could watch talks from Defcon and Chaos Computer Club. They both have a lot of interesting stuff on youtube (it can get a little racy though).

Finally, there are textbooks. These can be really long, and kinda boring. But I think they are much more approachable than one might think. These will expose you much more to the "Science" part of computer science. A large portions of the classes he will take in college look into this sort of stuff. Additionally, if he covers some of this stuff, he could look into messing around with AI (Neural Networks, etc.) and Machine Learning (I would check out Scikit-learn for Python). Here I will list different broad topics, and some of the really good books in each. (Almost all can be found for free.......)

General CS:
Algorithms and Data Structures: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms
Theory of Computation: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Michael-Sipser/dp/113318779X
Operating Systems: http://www.amazon.com/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/0470128720

Some Math:
Linear Algebra: http://math.mit.edu/~gs/linearalgebra/
Probability and Stats: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction-to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2014/readings/

I hope that stuff helps, I know you were asking about camps, and I think the one I suggested would be good, but this is stuff that he can do year round. Also, he should keep his GPA up and destroy the ACT.

Sorry that other people are being harsh critics, but yeah man. Respectfully, a couple of these are pretty overpriced.

Thing is, most people would rather buy a new book from the store than buy a used book for barely less than retail. I suggest you lower the prices, especially keeping this in mind:

Astrodynamics sells new for $17: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610

Propulsion sells new for $25: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Thermodynamics-Propulsion-Philip-Peterson/dp/8131729516/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526807320&sr=1-2&keywords=mechanics+and+thermodynamics+of+propulsion+2nd+edition

Your edition of COE 3001 sells new for $113: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Materials-James-M-Gere/dp/1111577730/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526807508&sr=1-2&keywords=mechanics+of+materials+goodno and it's also not the current edition

Best of luck. And if you find someone looking specifically for the current edition of the Mechanics of Materials book, please send them my way!

I was ISYE so I'm not sure how much you are allowed to cross over being CS but I would absolutely recommend taking a regression course. ISYE also has some data analysis electives, but to me learning and mastering regression is a must.

BBUUTT my biggest recommendation is to start playing with data yourself. I am a "Data Scientist" and graduated from the MS Analytics program at Tech and still to this day I learn the most just from playing around with data sets and trying new techniques or learning new coding tools. Don't wait to take classes to jump in, just go.

Here are some great books to get started doing "data science" in R and Python.

R: Introduction to Statistical Learning (free!!)

Python: Python for Data Analysis

Read anything by Ferrol Sams.

The Cormoran Strike series (by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling) is phenomenal.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky is very good, and the Monuments Men and Saving Italy are really good, too. All three are based on the true stories of people during WWII (and Monuments Men is far, FAR better than the movie).

If you like historical fiction, you can't do better than James Michener (my favorites are The Source, Texas, and Caribbean), Leon Uris (read The Trinity series... slog to get started, but worth it), and Edward Rutherford (just read them all).

I did, yes. And economists much smarter than you tend to agree. If that's a bit above you though, here's an excellent picture book that can explain it to you.

If you can already program, the most important thing is to get a good handle on modern C++. I can't think of a good class at GT that emphasizes things like smart pointers, multi-threading, or the modern standard lib. I learned from A Tour of C++:

https://www.amazon.com/Tour-C-Depth/dp/0321958314

If you want a better book for Calc 2, try this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Introduction-Dennis-Schneider/dp/0024069108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303943455&sr=8-1

It was recommended to me when I took Calc 2, and it is the sole reason I got an A in the class. Also, it's like $2.00 so that's nice too.

Hi! Thank you so much for doing this. I was hoping you could help with finding some of my business class books?

For Econ 2106-Microeconomics.

For MGT 2106-Legal Aspects of Business.

For MGT 2200- IT Management.

For MGT 2250-Management Statistics.

Edit: Found the book for IT Management. You can download it from this website, here.

The perceptual psychology class required us to get the 8th edition of this book. The cheapest I could find it, after some internet sleuthing, was $70 or so for a used copy... but as you can see it costs $160 new.

Instead, I got the 7th edition used for $8

The semester is over now and I made it through just fine with the older book.

And that is how college textbooks work :)

Ah, this is great! Thank you :)

I didn't manage to find the book I need for MATH 3215 though. Is there any way you could get Probability and Statistical Inference, Ninth Edition by Hogg, Tanis and Zimmerman?

lol ok I understand the confusion, this is exactly what happens with class material it comes out just like my post did, incoherent. I need to finish an assignment don’t really have time to go into this right now but there are articles and book on the topic that you could read and see if they align with your experience on the ground or not...I think they do

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/05/12/477687350/resisting-the-corporate-university-what-it-means-to-be-a-slow-professor


The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1487521855/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_hTsMDbM9TC68F

Like a lot of people are saying SAT is low.

But the good news is that you can raise it easily (relative to raising GPA) and cheaply.

This guy has some pretty good tutorials. Especially, pay attention to the writing and reading videos.

Buy an SAT Blue Book and do EVERY SINGLE practice test and problem. The book isn't too expensive, I even got mine from Goodwill for 3 or 4 dollars. You can print off sheets to bubble (set it to just print page 5-8 in the print menu) so that you can reuse the book and/or resell it.

If you have done all the problems in the Blue Book, You can do problems online, but I would stick to official SAT tests given after the last reform (anything in or after the 2nd Edition Blue Book I think is fine, the newer the better).

If you really are so passionate about math and could do it all day, do the SAT math all day, or at least for a few hours every day. There is a finite amount of types of questions they can ask since the test is standardized. If you master the questions they ask, you will have mastered everything they will throw at you, even the problems that seem weird. They cannot make surprise questions because of the nature of the test.

My first SAT score was 1850, and my 2nd was 2070 with only doing 2 of the practice tests in the blue book and watching a lot of the videos. It helps A LOT. In fact, I would say that the reading and writing are almost entirely just based on basic ability to read and knowing what kind of mode to get in.

Get your SAT score up high enough, and the GPA won't be as much of a problem (although you should still try to raise it, and certainly don't let it fall any more).

I initially learned Rails back in the day through a previous edition of this book, and found it a decent introduction. If you're already fluent in web programming and backend it may be a bit simplistic for your tastes, but it's a good introduction to "the Rails way" of doing things.

If you really want a deep dive on the Ruby language itself, far beyond what you'll need to get started on Rails apps, but what every mature developer should take the time to learn, David Flanagan's The Ruby Programming Language is a must-read.

By the way: don't knock the book until you try it. I think we've all had a bad experience with crappy, overpriced college textbooks, but professional reference books are a completely different story. It'll take less time than you think to make it cover-to-cover, and the organized, thorough presentation of a decent book ensures you'll come away with a complete understanding of the language that may even impress an interviewer when you're trying to get a job.

But CS1371 touched exactly none of these things. They should just fork all that into a new class. Maybe call it Matlab: The good parts or something.

For CS majors who might have a interview lined up already, try to make the time to read Cracking the Coding Interview. It's basically a TL;DR of CS 1332 with a lot of practice problems. Additionally, I found the behavioral and technical interview strategies very helpful.

Don't worry about how big the book is. Half of it is just problems and solutions. As a freshman, you probably only need to read the first 150 pages or so. Make sure to practice though!

We'll be teaching our daughter calculus when she arrives in November.

https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Calculus-Infants-Omi-Inouye/dp/0987823914

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