Which -math- books have you read? (and suggestions for fun ones)

Kyriakos

Creator
Joined
Oct 15, 2003
Messages
74,788
Location
The Dream
I do read math books on occasion, but more lately. A week or so ago I finished reading the biography of John Conway, who is of interest to me due to his mostly geometric approach to problems. I am also 1/4 into his (co-author) book on symmetries ("The Symmetries of Things"), where one can find important (and decently recent) breakthroughs in using topology to examine 2d forms (in other words, negating the value of actual measurements).
For people interested in calculus, there is always a ton of new youtube videos, of varying quality and fun-to-solemnity ratio. Again I mostly like the geometrical presentations.

Currently reading a historic (famous and celebrated) book on calculus, by Gardner. But although the first chapters were indeed a different approach (from first principles etc), now, 1/5 in the book, I was a bit surprised that Gardner considered it non-incogruous with his own stated approach to spend so many pages on presenting how to differentiate when you have multiplied or divided functions (who wants to read about division of polynomials here :p ), when he hasn't even shown to the reader why differentiation actually matters.

Then again the book has a co-author, so maybe those parts were written by the latter and the order was a compromise. Style is a bit inconsistent ;) I am obviously waiting for the part about the anti-derivative.
@Samson @red_elk @warpus
 
The only maths book I have read in the last few years is this, but it is not very fun. It is an amazing method though, you can basically build any model and throw any data at it and it will parameterise the model if it makes any sense at all.
 
I have a PhD in Mathematics, so one could say I'm reading math books all the time. While I'm not a researcher who writes papers that are published in journals, I do work on "project books" to further my understanding of different areas of mathematics. These days I've been working on problems in Teschl's "Ordinary Differential Equations" text. Also sitting on my desk is "Quantum Theory for Mathematicians," which I hope will help me get a firmer grasp of areas of physics that have long been mysterious to me. Physicists do mathematics in a very different way than mathematicians -- almost a different language -- but this book promises to help bridge the gap.

But, having gotten into gaming in June, and subsequently discovering Civilization 6 in August, I have to admit that my studies of mathematics have slackened of late. "Just one more turn!"
 
I have a PhD in Mathematics, so one could say I'm reading math books all the time. While I'm not a researcher who writes papers that are published in journals, I do work on "project books" to further my understanding of different areas of mathematics. These days I've been working on problems in Teschl's "Ordinary Differential Equations" text. Also sitting on my desk is "Quantum Theory for Mathematicians," which I hope will help me get a firmer grasp of areas of physics that have long been mysterious to me. Physicists do mathematics in a very different way than mathematicians -- almost a different language -- but this book promises to help bridge the gap.

But, having gotten into gaming in June, and subsequently discovering Civilization 6 in August, I have to admit that my studies of mathematics have slackened of late. "Just one more turn!"
You could always help us come up with a function for (set goal play: eg when to build the first settler) the first 15-20 turns in Civ games :D (discussed in another thread)
 
Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book. Both by Simon Singh. Do these count?
Why not? I haven't read anything by him, but google tells me the book did very well in the UK (#1) and one has to suppose it gives a good synopsis of the road to the (eventual) proof for that theorem.
 
Yeah, it’s challenging to make such a theme available for the masses. Well done by Singh.
 
Top Bottom