Ben Orlin on some great puzzle books:
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2022/01/24/what-makes-a-great-puzzle-five-books-five-answers/
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Who Doesn't Love Games...
Well, look who has a new book on the way (it could even be a game-changer... so to speak):
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2022/01/19/math-games-with-bad-drawings-2/
Friday, January 7, 2022
Aussie Math
They say 'don't judge a book by its cover,' but I don't know, this one looks interesting and made me chuckle:
https://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/2022/01/a-dingo-ate-my-math-book/
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Thinking Better ....if it isn't already too late :(
I happen to be currently reading and enjoying Marcus du Sautoy's latest book, "Thinking Better" and lo-and-behold Grokscience has a fresh podcast with him:
https://grokscience.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/thinking-better/
ADDENDUM:
...and on the heels of the above podcast, here's another with Marcus discussing his book:
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Getting Into "Shape"....
Recently finished Jordan Ellenberg’s latest, “Shape” (plenty of reviews online), a great followup to his fantastic “How Not To Be Wrong” volume. It’s 400+ pages of “the hidden geometry” of life, but this is not your daddy’s (or necessarily even your own) geometry, rather a bit more modern and diverse take than Euclid ever provided. Anyway, great read, though possibly a tad more pedagogical than his earlier best-selling work, if only because much of the subject matter is drier or just more pedagogical in nature (Ellenberg’s writing style always enlivens it though).
With all that said, at the end of the volume Jordan lists many of the topics he wanted or considered including in the book, but in the end left out… another great, varied list of subjects (that sound to me even more interesting than the topics he did include!), so hopefully, maybe, perhaps, Jordan is now hard-at-work on a third volume!?
Friday, August 20, 2021
Great Review of "The Creativity Code"
Fascinating review by Michael Harris of Marcus du Sautoy's latest, "The Creativity Code":
https://siliconreckoner.substack.com/p/book-review-the-creativity-code-by
...and somewhat related, this recent piece on "common sense" and AI:
Saturday, July 3, 2021
Vitally Linked, Music and Math
Have always found the linkage between math and music interesting, especially since encountering so many individuals over time who were music majors with math minors, or, vice-versa. Anyway, noticed newish book during trip to bookstore this morning that looked interesting (but haven't read, so just supposing), "Music, Math, and Mind: the physics and neuroscience of music" by David Sulzer:
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/music-math-and-mind/9780231193795
Thursday, June 3, 2021
New Bio of Gödel
A li'l beach reading ;)
A new biography of Kurt Gödel is out (h/t to Natalie Wolchover for pointing it out):
Monday, May 17, 2021
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Jason Rosenhouse
Recently bought Jason Rosenhouse’s “Games For Your Mind The History and Future of Logic Puzzles,” his 2020 volume on, well, the history and future of logic puzzles. Just scanning through it’s pages I can tell it is a delightful compendium of puzzle and logic topics, certainly including many familiar classics, but also with material I think most readers will find new to them. On top of that I have always enjoyed Rosenhouse’s writing (indeed I’m surprised he isn’t a bit better known in the popular and recreational math writing arena). His “The Monty Hall Problem” is a fabulous treatment of that popular puzzle, and he did a similarly wonderful full volume on Sudoku, as well as co-editing other volumes on recreational math, and editing a great tribute to Raymond Smullyan.
Many who are familiar with Rosenhouse first became aware of him though through his former “Evolution Blog” at the old Science Blogs site. That blog title became a bit of a misnomer after he ventured into all manner of topics, having started off focusing on the evolutionist/creationist wars. His writing was always crisp and incisive whether covering math, puzzles, chess, education, politics, or culture, in addition to the original evolution theme (which he also authored a book about). Even when I disagreed with his viewpoint I always admired his logical step-by-step commentary and argumentation, and highly recommend, if you're not already familiar with him, get so, with this current Princeton University Press volume likely a great place to start.
Sunday, March 7, 2021
Math Without What!
Haven't been doing much reading in last year, but am currently enjoying Milo Beckman's fun, jaunty volume "Math Without Numbers" which, if you can believe it, covers several topics in the foundations of higher and abstract mathematics... without any mention of numbers, equations, formulas, and the like! Difficult to think of another volume quite like it. Highly recommended for those wanting a simple introduction to some advanced math topics:
https://www.amazon.com/Math-Without-Numbers-Milo-Beckman/dp/1524745545
... a review of it here, from The Aperiodical:
https://aperiodical.com/2021/01/review-math-without-numbers-by-milo-beckman/
...and Milo has his own YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURP6q1VjGEFfy7GPP3Tm0w
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Fun Faves
Recently saw a web-post of someone listing their 5 favorite just-for-fun math books to read and got me to wondering what I might choose for such a list from my own bookshelf. There have been so many entertaining, fun reads in popular math over the last few decades (including MANY I don’t have on my bookshelf) it’s a near-impossible choice, but in a quick-scan here’s what I came up with in no particular order (in large part these are volumes that can be picked up, turned to any page or section, and land upon some fun or interesting content for the lay-reader; and oddly, with the exception of Ben’s book, these are mostly older offerings):
1. Curious and Interesting Mathematics by David Wells
2. Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes by Bryan Bunch
3. Math Charmers by Alfred Posamentier
4. The Colossal Book of Mathematics by Martin Gardner
…and, of course:
5. Math With Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Monday, November 30, 2020
Let The Shopping Begin
Usually toward the end of the year I do some sort of review of popular math books from the year gone by, including choosing a “Book of the Year.” That tradition ends this year as I have read no math books (and very few books at all) since last March, having been so distracted by covid and the insane politics of America… moreover that rascal Ben Orlin didn’t put out a book this year, so what is the point of naming a book-of-the-year! Just kidding, there were once again many fabulous books out in 2020 for the dedicated math fan. The four I did look at, and absolutely loved (and recommend), early in the year were, in no special order:
Mathematics for Human Flourishing
Five more recent volumes that have definitely caught my eye are:
Best Writing On Mathematics 2020
…. but many other math volumes appeared in the course of this year and if math books are part of your holiday shopping list you ought have no trouble finding several to select from. Indeed, this almost seems like a Renaissance period of math exposition, with the problem being over-choice, not scarcity!
ADDENDUM: will go ahead and add this volume I just learned of today:
Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers
Thursday, February 27, 2020
A Cook Book of Paradoxes
A review of “Sleight of Mind” by Matt Cook (due out in late March):
Paradoxes, I think, say a lot about the workings of the human mind and human logic… they’ve always fascinated me, and they come in a myriad of forms.
Oddly, author Matt Cook is listed as an economist and a magician… I say oddly only because most books on paradoxes that I’m familiar with are written by either mathematicians or philosophers. Yet Matt has put together one of the overall best and broadest compendiums I’ve seen of wonderful paradoxes (divided into 13 categories), ranging across mathematics/probability, philosophy, and logic, before ending with 3 chapters on physics-related paradoxes (by contributing authors) that aren’t usually included in such math-related compendiums. And then to conclude, Matt recruits Grant Sanderson (of 3blue1brown YouTube fame) to add a final essay on whether mathematics is invented or discovered. I didn’t honestly feel this essay (on a well-worn issue) fit that well in the overall volume, but still always interesting to hear Sanderson’s take on any topic.
The volume covers (according to its own promotion) 75+ paradoxes, including most all the best-known and studied ones that a reader would expect, but also with some that most readers may find new to them. I did manage to think of a couple that I’ve covered here on the blog previously which I didn't find in the book, but which I think would make fine additions (the second below is a probability paradox, and the first is what Cook would perhaps classify as an “operations” paradox):
The format throughout Cook's book is to state/describe the paradox, and then give two (or more) possible ways of, or approaches to, explaining it, followed by a discussion of why one explanation is true and the other(s) is/are not. Some of these discussions I think are a bit too short, not quite always convincing (needing a bit more fleshing out), but in most cases the discussion seems about right: not too brief, but not too deep into the weeds either. Cook’s writing is sometimes rather pedantic, and occasionally there is some serious math involved, so even though the paradoxes are usually inherently interesting, the volume is more appropriate to a college level student than a lower level (though, again, the majority of the paradoxes could be understood by young students -- and I've long been a believer that paradoxes offer a great example for young people of the imprecision/uncertainty of human logic and analytical thinking; in short, it would be fun and instructive to share many parts of the volume with primary/secondary students).
I am particularly interested in “self-reference,” and appropriately (to me) by far the longest chapter in Cook’s book is on self-reference paradoxes. Other favorite topics for this reader are supertasks, probability, induction, and geometry, but your own personal preferences will guide which of the 14 chapters you find most interesting.
There are by now several good compendiums and discussions of paradoxes available; the scope and readability of this volume makes it a great addition to the subject-area. I recommend it. …and, that sentence is not false.
----------------------------
==> will just note that I'm reviewing a review copy of the volume that was sent to me back inJanuary December and am assuming there will be no major revisions in the final March-released edition.
==> will just note that I'm reviewing a review copy of the volume that was sent to me back in
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Ian Stewart Delivers... again
I’ve read 4 popular math books already this year and they’ve all been great… though all very different. What a quick start to the new year!
Ian Stewart volumes are consistently good, but with that said there’s also a certain “sameness” to his prolific work — popular topics treated with clarity and wisdom, but not necessarily terribly new, inspiring, or original; just clear basic elucidation. So I was hesitant to read his latest volume (out in 2019, but more readily available in the U.S. now) with a title, “Do Dice Play God?” (a play off an Einstein quote, and also off an earlier book he wrote), which I found a little too ‘cutesy.’ and not all that informative of the content.
However, I not only thoroughly enjoyed this volume, but consider it one of his best, and most important yet… not because it’s any more original or otherwise outstanding than Stewart's other writing, but because he is covering some of the most currently important topics for the lay public: statistics, probability, uncertainty (and how they relate to critical thinking) — indeed this is likely the best volume I’ve seen for presenting these crucial subjects to a general audience, and Stewart isn’t even a statistician by profession (and professional statisticians may find technical flaws in his text). The range of topics and examples, even though well-worn, is great and lucidly presented. I think many will be surprised at just how good (and relevant) it is! Not sure, but I suspect this Stewart effort may have been partly overshadowed in 2019 by the release of David Spiegelhalter's also-excellent (and somewhat more technical) volume, "The Art of Statistics."
If you’re already ensconced in the nuances and debates involving statistics these days you won’t find much new or original in this volume, but for the mass public this is a fantastic introduction (and there are many good ones) to these important concerns — Stewart offers just enough detail without diving too deep into the weeds to leave readers behind (although admittedly, some numeracy is required). Moreover, at various points he also moves the discussion away from abstraction and theory, to stress how prediction, probability, and uncertainty are especially pertinent to our daily lives and current societal issues.
One interesting sidenote to me: toward the end of the book Stewart ambles off into a number of more complex theoretical physics topics, and this is a trend I’ve been seeing in a number of math books… focusing more-than-usual, at some point, on physics. Perhaps just my imagination, but it seems as if the linkages between math and physics (always strong of course) are becoming even more central to both fields as time goes on. Physics has always recognized the foundational basis of mathematics, but more and more the linkages between the two fields seem to be feeding back-and-forth off of one another in pursuit of new insights (just my impression).
Anyway, if you’ve been wanting a primer on what all the fuss is about in statistics these days (or you know someone who needs such), read this book (or buy it for a friend).
-----------------------------
...I'll soon be posting a review of Matt Cook's highly-entertaining "Sleight of Mind" (with an end-of-March publication date), but the next volume in my reading queue looks to be another fascinating 2019 read, a biography of James Simon, "The Man Who Solved the Market."
-----------------------------
...I'll soon be posting a review of Matt Cook's highly-entertaining "Sleight of Mind" (with an end-of-March publication date), but the next volume in my reading queue looks to be another fascinating 2019 read, a biography of James Simon, "The Man Who Solved the Market."
Monday, February 10, 2020
Humble Math…
OK, don’t waste your time reading Matt Parker’s latest book, "Humble Pi," from page 1 to page 314… complete waste of friggin’ effort; reads like gibberish and a crazy travesty of publishing. Who knows what kind of psilocybin Matt was on when he wrote the dang thing….
INSTEAD… read the volume from page 314 to page 1 and you will be thoroughly entertained by the range of uniquely-strewn-together topics Matt combines in this rollicking volume peppered with his usual droll-to-wacky humor… one can easily imagine Parker at his writing tablet, smirking as he composes the many lines that will beget a chortle from unsuspecting readers (unsuspecting that there be humor in math).
The book is full of gems… math gems, humor gems, and just thought gems, scattered throughout an unpredictable mix of math nuances and perversities, which will leave you earnestly hoping that Parker has agreed to donate his fertile brain to science (preferably after he passes). In fact, I’m no longer sure who makes me laugh more, Ben Orlin, Matt Parker, Ricky Gervais, or the Evangelicals who vote for Donald Trump while labeling themselves moral or patriotic (LOL, OMG).
“Humble Pi” was already a big bestseller across the pond in Britain last year (perhaps explaining why the publisher actually sent it to America, lo-and-behold, absent-mindedly keeping the same title), so now it's time for Americans to show what they're made of, and buy it! — though admittedly, my Homeland, especially under the Trump Regime, is not characterized by a fondness for math/science matters (except, of course, as it may apply to money-laundering and tax evasion, two topics Matt can include when he does the sequel, “Humble Fourth Reich”).
Indeed I’m always amazed when I venture into a Barnes and Noble and see some mathy volume on a front table display right alongside a John Grisham work or the latest 'how-to-live-to-be-200' effort (or some such) from Dr. Oz. In any event, here at the blog, I’m speaking to a choir of math enthusiasts who will hopefully prefer this volume over the latest schlock from Dan Brown. For all remaining Americans who aren't under the spell of Q-Anon, and who prefer fun to fascism, this is a fab read.
Computers, engineering, numbers, money, statistics, randomness, time, probability, algorithms, and more…. it’s all here for your delectation… and it ain’t always pretty… but then, that's sort of Matt’s point.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Flourishing With Francis Su
When I was part-way through Francis Su’s new book I tweeted out, “Am about halfway through Francis Su's "Mathematics For Human Flourishing"... and astounded at what a beautiful read it is (& suitable for such a wide swathe of readers)!”
Since finishing it I’ll just say that 100x; certainly in the running for my ‘popular math book of the year,’ and, it’s only January (…of course that assumes that that rascal Ben Orlin doesn’t enter the fray this year with an entry). Some call Su’s book “inspiring,” though I think “meditative” and “reflective” may be more apt terms. It is certainly not at all the ‘typical’ popular math book (though there are a few fun math problems included). Indeed, words used in the blurbs for the book on the back cover include, "compelling," "galvanizing," "sublime," "lyrical," "all-embracing"... words not often associated with math volumes.
The book has already received so many accolades from so many quarters that I feel no compulsion to offer a review here. As most likely know, Su’s book is an outgrowth of a farewell address he gave to the MAA upon departing his term as President of the organization. That address pretty much went viral through the math cybersphere, if not beyond. If you are familiar with it than you know the flavor and themes of this book and Su's vision.
Often when speeches, essays, short pieces and the like are turned into book-length projects they come off as artificially stretched or composed of a lot of redundant ‘filler.’ Not so with Su’s volume; it maintains a rich, creative feel throughout most of the text. And as my original tweet indicates I believe it can be easily enjoyed by math professors and middle school students alike (and everyone in-between), as Su combines two words, “mathematics” and “flourishing” that rarely mingle in the public mind.
Oddly, in a way, this very current book reminds me of some words from the Introduction to a Laurie Buxton book, "Mathematics For Everyone" over 35 years ago, that I'll end with (from the Introduction):
"Mathematics is a living and growing organism; within it are intricate and delicate structures of strong aesthetic appeal. It offers opportunities for surprise as unexpected vistas open the mind to new lines of thought. There is a moment when, after struggling with an intractable problem, the mechanism is suddenly clear, and the problem resolves with a deep sense of rightness. In this it offers the most intense sense of intellectual pleasures.
"Mathematics was created by all manner of people. There were religious bigots and atheists, political reactionaries and wild revolutionaries, snobs and egalitarians; some were people of great charm, some odious. If there is any common denominator, it is a driving curiosity, a desire to understand, a need to build, even if the structures be abstract. Admirably suited though mathematics is to modelling the real world, it can be developed totally without dependence on anything outside itself. Parts of it are simply mind creations, owing nothing to the physical world. It is a playground for the mind...
"Regrettably, many of us have never been allowed to see what mathematics is. It has been obscured by pointless emphasis on routines rather than ideas. This failure to distinguish what is important has led many people to see mathematics as a collection of totally arbitrary rules which have to be learnt by rote, and performed with the exactness and precision of a religious rite. Ask a person if there is much to be remembered in mathematics; if they speak of an overwhelming mass of material, their education in this area has been counter-productive; not merely neutral. Mathematics, properly seen, is a connected web; grasp at one piece and all the surrounding region comes to mind."
ADDENDUM: Since I'm not giving a detailed review of the volume here I'll offer this link to a fuller review:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/01/francis-su-math
Thursday, January 16, 2020
More Book Lists…
Book lists always make good space-fillers! So here we go ;)
Awhile back I stumbled upon an 8-year-old post from prolific author Ian Stewart listing his “Top 10” popular math books:
In 2012 that list was as follows (no particular order):
The Man Who Knew Infinity — Robert Kanigel
Gödel, Escher, Bach — Douglas Hofstadter
The Colossal Book of Mathematics — Martin Gardner
Euclid and The Rainforest — Joseph Mazur
Four Colors Suffice — Robin Wilson
What Is Mathematics, Really? — Reuben Hersh
Magical Mathematics — Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham
Games of Life — Karl Sigmund
Mathematical Tales of Mathematical Wonder — ed. by Rudy Rucker
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy — Isaac Newton
(don't know what Stewart might add to that list in the dozen years since it appeared)
(don't know what Stewart might add to that list in the dozen years since it appeared)
———————————
This made me start looking around the Web for other favorite popular math book lists. There were fewer than I expected.
This 13-member list comes from math teacher Ali Kayaspor:
- Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea — Charles Seife.
- Prelude to Mathematics — W.W. Sawyer.
- Measurement — Paul Lockhart
- The Joy of X — Steven Strogatz.
- An Imaginary Tale — Paul Nahin.
- Proofs From the Book — Aigner and Ziegler
- Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension — Matt Parker
- What is Mathematics? — Courant and Robbins
- A History of Pi — Petr Beckmann
- e: The Story of a Number -- Eli Maor
- Imagining Numbers -- Barry Mazur
- Journey Through Genius -- William Dunham
- Prime Obsession -- John Derbyshire
Kayaspor also has a separate book-list "for math people and designers":
From the GoodReads website comes this list of a dozen math-related books:
Gödel, Escher, Bach — D. Hofstadter
Fermat’s Enigma — Simon Singh
Flatland — Edwin Abbott
The Code Book — Simon Singh
Zero — Charles Seife
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers — Paul Hoffman
Journey Through Genius — W. Dunham
A Beautiful Mind — Sylvia Nasar
The Drunkard’s Walk — Leonard Mlodinow
How to Lie with Statistics — Darrell Huff
Euclid’s Elements — Euclid
What Is Mathematics — Courant and Robbins
The FiveBooks site offers this (2018) list of 10 best math 'history' books:
Prime Obsession — J. Derbyshire
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician — Morris Kline
Zero the biography of a dangerous idea — Charles Seife
A Concise History of Mathematics — Dirk Struik
Unknown Quantity — J. Derbyshire
The Math Book — Clifford Pickover
A History of Mathematics — Merzbach and Boyer
God Created the Integers — Stephen Hawking
Fermat’s Enigma — Simon Singh
Journey Through Genius — W. Dunham
The Fivebooks site has several other science/math related listings possibly worth perusing:
——————————--——
This list comes from Peter Flom on Quora:
A Mathematician's Lament — Paul Lockhart
Out of the Labyrinth — Robert and Ellen Kaplan
Conversations with a Mathematician — Gregory Chaitin
Proofs and Refutations — Imre Lakatos.
Mathematics: Coffee Time in Memphis — Bela Belobas
The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Science 1250-15400 — Alfred Crosby
Godel Escher Bach — Douglas Hofstadter
The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel — Rebecca Goldstein
Group Theory in the Bedroom and Other Mathematical Diversions — Brian Hayes
Pretty much anything by Martin Gardner or Ian Stewart
Pretty much anything by Martin Gardner or Ian Stewart
------------------------------------
Here's one of several Reddit threads related to favorite math books:
Simon Singh offers up a long list of recommendations here:
And finally, I’ll add my own tentative baker's-dozen list (in no special order, and subject to change on a different day-of-the-week) to the mix:
The Prime Number Conspiracy — ed. by Thomas Lin
Single Digits — Marc Chamberland
Math With Bad Drawings — Ben Orlin
Things To Make and Do In the Fourth Dimension — Matt Parker
How Not To Be Wrong -- Jordan Ellenberg
The Language of Mathematics — Keith Devlin
The Colossal Book of Mathematics — Martin Gardner
How Mathematicians Think — William Byers
The Music of the Primes — Marcus du Sautoy
Mathematics For Everyone — Laurie Buxton
Grapes of Math — Alex Bellos
Unknown Quantity — John Derbyshire
The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics -- David Wells
The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics -- David Wells
———————————————
3 additional books are among my all-time favorites, but their subject matter crosses so many boundaries that I don’t really think of them as ‘popular math books’:
The Outer Limits of Reason — Noson Yanofsky
Gödel, Escher, Bach — Douglas Hofstadter
When Einstein Walked With Gödel — Jim Holt
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By the way, for those whose taste runs to fiction Alex Kasman maintains a large site of recommended math-related fiction/novels:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/
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By the way, for those whose taste runs to fiction Alex Kasman maintains a large site of recommended math-related fiction/novels:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/
---------------------------------------------
Honestly though, all of these barely scratch the surface of the wonderful math reading that is out there. Indeed, I think we're currently experiencing a kind of golden age for popular math!
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