Re: YAC (Yet Another Challenge): Oldest Useful Computer Text

[jhourcle]

Not directly programming related, but if you're doing UI work, and tend to generate reports. (or if you have to deal with sales literature, or anything that deals with graphing)

• Huff, Darrell (1954). How to Lie with Statistics. (reissued in 1993).

The only other >20 yr old books I have on my shelf that might be worth reading are on indexing languages. They're written for library science folks, not comp sci, so the jargon and obsessive cross references takes a little getting used to:

• Soergel, Dagobert (1974). Indexing Languages and Thesauri: Construction and Maintenance.
• Soergel, Dagobert (1985). Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and Retrieval Systems.

(I also have some really old database books, but I don't know that I'd recommend them ... and older langauges (PC LOGO, FORTRAN, but they're only useful if you're working in the language)

Update: for those not familiar with Huff's book, although the title sounds like its intent is to be deceptive, and can be used that way, it also make a number of suggestions about how to convey information that won't be misinterpreted, and things to look for that might suggest that the data is suspect