In my last post, I said

I’ve been scattering my attention among some potential next steps in my Lisp self-education.

Since then, that scattering has only increased. I sprung for a hard copy of SICP. Soon after, I began facing the reality of my mathematical immaturity. I used Concrete Abstractions to begin filling in some of those gaps, along with Khan Academy, the Stitz-Zeager books and, eventually, a copy of Calculus Made Easy. I considered treating Brian Harvey as the Vergil to my Dante (not that SICP is Hell; maybe Purgatory?) thanks to the great plan found here. Meanwhile, I continued my self-education in formal logic, spurred by an interest in formal semantics, again scattering my attention. And then my second semester at SLIS began.

The coursework has been more engaging this semester than last semester, focusing, so far, on Information Science and Linked Data (nothing like reading a paper with extensive quotes in French and Italian and references to both Umberto Eco and Alan Turing to get the blood flowing). This means, perhaps fortunately, less time for self-study (read: attention scattering). But, because in reading the RDF specification documents I’ve discovered the authors’ backgrounds in what I will somewhat ignorantly call classical AI, I think it will be worthwhile to continue studying logic on my own. Perhaps more on this in a future post.

So, the plan, in short, is this: while doing all the reading for my courses I will

  • continue studying logic and semantics
  • continue studying math
  • save my study of SICP for this summer, ideally with increased mathematical capability and perhaps still using Harvey’s Spring 2011 CS61A as a guide.