Comments on: Just some good books about Math, for those who like Math

By: samjshah

samjshah — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:18:40 +0000

Another note for me: a link to “great math books” on math-blogs:

http://math-blog.com/2011/02/10/great-math-books/

By: samjshah

samjshah — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:44:23 +0000

Another book for my records: This beautiful edition of Euclid’s elements. I want a copy for ME!

Amazon.com: Six Books of Euclid (9783836517751): Werner Oechslin, Petra Lamers-Schutze: Books

By: samjshah

samjshah — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 15:43:59 +0000

Another book for my records: This beautiful edition of Euclid’s elements. I want a copy for ME!

By: Have a Mathy Christmas | Let's Play Math!

Have a Mathy Christmas | Let's Play Math! — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:30:40 +0000

[...] Just some good books about Math, for those who like Math Sam wanted to give books as awards for high school math students. Many good ideas in the post and the comments. [...]

By: Bill the Lizard

Bill the Lizard — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:41:01 +0000

There are some really great picks here, both in the post and in the comments. I’ll add my own recommendations for Derbyshire’s “Unknown Quantity” and Keith Devlin’s “The Millennium Problems”.

By: samjshah

samjshah — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:23:44 +0000

For my own records, I just wanted to link to Maxwell’s Demon which has a good list of books too: http://maxwelldemon.com/2009/07/20/mathematical-materials/

And one more blog post: http://math-blog.com/2009/07/31/my-mid-2009-math-reading-list/

By: Fafnir

Fafnir — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:50:23 +0000

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a wonderful, wonderful book, but not something I’d give to a high schooler unless I knew they were going to do maths at university. The “prerequisites” chapter includes real analysis and manifolds, for example. (If they are doing maths at university, though, they’ll really enjoy it after their first or second year.)

I would *strongly* recommend Keith Ball’s “Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and other Mathematical Explorations”. It’s very well-written, and there’s some extremely nice stuff in there – Pick’s theorem (an incredibly nice way of solving lattice problems of the type often given to children in school), Stirling’s approximation to n factorial, the dragon curve (a continuous bijection from [0,1] to [0,1]x[0,1]) and the irrationality of pi and e all feature. With proofs. In terms of prerequisites, some chapters require calculus but that’s about as far as it goes.

By: Recommended readings (5/11/09) « Division by Zero

Recommended readings (5/11/09) « Division by Zero — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:33:28 +0000

[...] Just some good books about math, for those who like math ~ Summer reading suggestions in the article and the comments [...]

By: jd2718

jd2718 — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:15:12 +0000

I still have my Men of Mathematics on the shelf. I’ve read it a few times, including since I learned about how free Bell was with some facts… And I’m proud to have won it, but it’s not a very good book.

Devlin’s (I know, I know, I don’t think much of some of the things he’s written recently on pedagogy, but that’s a separate issue) “Language of Mathematics”?

A nice edition of “The Elements”? (thank Kate for reminding us)

A Gardner puzzle book? (There’s a nice CD somewhere)

Livio’s phi book, or Kaplan’s 0 book?

I like The Man Who Counted and the Number Devil, not just for kids (but I do like them for kids), but for older kids they read very easy, and they have a chance to reflect on simpler mathematics in a non-textbook layout.

Jonathan

By: Carnival of Mathematics #52 « The Number Warrior

Carnival of Mathematics #52 « The Number Warrior — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:35:36 +0000

[...] Sam Shah asks which books would make good awards for students. [...]