Hamming, Intro to The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (March 28, 1995)

Richard Hamming introduces his course on the style of thinking required to do great science and engineering.

Intro: The purpose of this course is to prepare you for your technical future. There is really no technical content in the course, though I will, of course, refer to a great deal of it, and hopefully it will be a good review of the fundamentals that you have learned. Do not think the technical content is the course - it is only illustrative material. Style of thinking is the center of the course. I am concerned with educating and not training you. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" was the capstone course by Dr. Richard W. Hamming (1915-1998) for graduate students at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California. This course is intended to instill a "style of thinking" that will enhance one's ability to function as a problem solver of complex technical issues. With respect, students sometimes called the course "Hamming on Hamming" because he relates many research collaborations, discoveries, inventions and achievements of his own. This collection of stories and carefully distilled insights relates how those discoveries came about. Most importantly, these presentations provide objective analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as Dr. Hamming, his associates and other major thinkers, in computer science and electronics, progressed through the grand challenges of science and engineering in the twentieth century.