(Disclosure: I have never taken a financial math course.)

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

Apparently at the time of writing it's worth $34.78 on paperback. You could argue that that's the printing costs. However, if I were to copy that book with a scanner and distribute it online for a cost of $0 it would be copyright infringement. Thus the words and ideas themselves must have some form of economic value. (Or at least perceived economic value.)

You can already measure one variable associated with reading: Time spent. After all, by some metrics time translates to money and vice versa. And okay, the benefits of reading are nonlinear. So instead make it a probability. What is the chance that the book I am about to read will, even in conjunction with other books, will have justified the amount of time I spent reading it? (You can probably use some subjective measures here like happiness generated from fantasy.) In the case of reading to enrich your knowledge in a particular field you ask an important subset of that question: What is the chance that this book will, even in conjunction with other books, have a significant impact on my ability to work in my chosen field versus the chance that if I went and started one of my projects right now I would succeed?

Theres more than one project I have right now for which I've said "Nope, need to do more reading.".

On the note of comparing equivalent courses, I've just started going through "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", and I'm attempting to simultaneously go through all of the major courses based around it simultaneously.

First, there's the book itself: http://sicpebook.wordpress.com/ebook/

There's the Abelson / Sussman lectures from 1986: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

There's UC Berkeley CS 61A, for which at least 4 semesters of full lectures are available: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E89002AA9B9879E http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD7B8D6A4834C14C8 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6879A8466C44A5D5 http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and-interpret...

And there's also the ArsDigita University course from ~2000: http://aduni.org/courses/sicp/index.php?view=cw http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita_01_sicp

And the SICP wiki is useful for when you get stuck: http://sicp.org.ua/sicp

The comments on amazon.com for the book are interesting. The first is from Peter Norvig, and the second from Paul Graham! http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

Just for fun, I clicked on the link and looked for SICP. Amazon gave me a price of $115.44. If you look at the bottom, you'll see a link for the same book, only Amazon is selling it for $69.34!

What is the difference between the two? The links are:

$115.44 : http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

$69.34 : http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

Aside from price, the only difference that I can make out is that the cover for the more expensive version is a lighter shade of blue. What it looks like is that Amazon is charging a lot more if you buy SICP as a textbook rather than as a regular book.