The Happiness Hypothesis - One of the top five works of non-fiction I've read so far imo. Great writing, wide ranging, relevant and incredibly even handed and bold in its dealing with ideas.

+1

I'd also recommend "For and against Method" which does a nice job explaining the positions of Lakatos and Feyerabend including their correspondence and intellectual "feud" (they were good friends). I always find the friendly competition between clashing ideas a la Bohr vs Einstein interesting, another one from the realm of philosophy would be "Wittgenstein's poker" (Wittgenstein vs Popper, not as friendly though).
Feyerabend's "Against Method" by itself is also good (but not really ).

Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is also an interesting (must) read but I'd actually prefer Ludwik Flecks work. "Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache" (The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact) and "Erfahrung und Tatsache" (Cognition and Fact) only read those in German so I'm not sure if the translations are any good.

Im looking for a book(s) about (financial) time series analysis from
semi-introductory level up to GARCH/MMAR-models.

This is what I used: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Analysi...9976138&sr=1-1

and I found it quite good. The comments on Amazon call it "Time Series Bible" and "good for references, useful for self study", both of which I tend to agree with.

I think this book should contain everything you need, but check the table of contents to see if it does (e.g. MMAR-models). Also note the link is to Amazon.co.uk.

Ty

It doesnt seem to be anything about MMAR, which is what i really want to learn more about.

But it could be a good idea to start with that book and then continue with

Multifractal Volatility: Theory, Forecasting, and Pricing

Fractals and Scaling In Finance: Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk

"A graduate-level text which describes the recent dramatic changes that have taken place in the way that researchers analyze economic and financial time series. It explores such important innovations as vector regression, nonlinear time series models and the generalized methods of moments.ILL."

I havent ordered it yet, but I think i need something easiser to start with.
Any suggestions?

From reading another book i realized i have forgotten almost everything from my university math courses, about ten years ago. And during those five years of math and physics i only read introductory courses in statistics.

So i need something semi-simple to start with and then i hope i can understand those three books.

wow what a great thread! i have languished far too long in cash and stt poker threads and what a pleasure as a philosophy and english graduate to dip my toes here tentatively and slightly vaguely

On the philsophy side I find understanding the classic Greek philsophers essential to how we think of Philosophy today and the philosophical problems they discussed were the most complex and fundamental I learned

Plato - The Republic, Theaetetus, Sophist, The Theory of Forms and Socratic Dialogues

Aristotle - from various sources and largely inferred so as such not readable in a few books

On the history side I loved Herodotus, the 'Father of History' - The Nines Muses in particular

As general sages I loved writers such as Shakespeare and Charles Dickens who teach us so much about humanity and society via the medium of beautiful writing and story telling

As a pig ignorant maths and physics man I found works on chaos and quantum theory like
The quantum theory of superposition by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 and later laymans interpretations of it fascinating

All takes me back to studying Ancient History and Philsophy as school and university respectively - great memories!

Hey guys I have a request. I'm looking for a gem of a book on geology. I want to learn about the geologic time scale of the earth. I have been reading a decent amount of wiki on the topic recently but I think I would like to read a good book on the topic. Should I find a used text-book? or is there a book that is to geology like Dawkins selfish gene is to biology? Thanks xD

Ryanb9,

check out Annals of the Former World

Depending on how geology-specific you want to get (ZOMG LOOK AT THAT AMAZING INCLUSION), there are plenty of decent paleobiology books out there that would give lots of context and provide geo basics at the same time.

An excellent book is Understanding Earth, you should be able to pick this up used as it is used extensively as a college text for introduction to Geology. Very well written and informative.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-.../dp/0716796171

-Zeno

I'm a big fan of the recent release The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. In terms of descriptive morality, I think it seems very on point. There is very little in there that is prescriptive, which I think is probably the weakest point of the book in some sense. But, then again, perhaps one of the takeaways from it is the difficulty of coming up with a useful prescriptive morality.

Haidt's model of morality describes people pretty darn well.* Very good read for those that want to figure out exactly how silly they are. Can be misread to figure out how silly other people are if you ignore that you are one of them.

*It isn't the end-all-be-all as the research is young and furthering the understanding should be expected as the data comes in.

I am looking for a good book or two on Origins of the Universe. I want to be able to explain and discuss the Big Bang theory and other relevant theories (like the Big Crunch theory). Thanks.

This would certainly be a useful read:

The Fabric of the Comos, by Brian Greene (a leading physicist):

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fabric-Cos.../dp/0375412883