Mathematics Students discussion

Which books can any one recommend or advise us to stay away from?

I personally love Simon Singh, his books The Code Bookand Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem are a great introduction into mathematics and can be read even without a massive mathematical knowledge.

Men of Mathematics gives an unusual insight into the life of many famous mathematicians and I would highly recommend it.

A Mathematician's Apology is just phenomenal.

I've read and enjoyed Letters to a Young Mathematician, The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless, Zero, The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved & Why Numbers Are Like Gossip, and Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. At least these are probably the ones I've found most enjoyable since they're the ones that have stuck with me. Actually I've enjoyed everything that John Allen Paulos has published. I have another book by Keith Devilin, and I'm hoping that's also good.

I've also read Fermat's Enigma and enjoyed that quite a bit. I want to read "A Mathematician's Apology" someday for sure... however dated it may be.

Maybe I'll sift through my collection and see if I can find some of the stuff I didn't like much. Mostly I didn't like some things because they were overly dry.

I don't think a work like 'A Mathematician's Apology' ever truly becomes 'dated'. It's often a misrepresented account, and you'll find my thoughts in my review.

I very much enjoyed Julian Havil's Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant, which was one of the first books of that sort I came across and remains a favourite.
Since then I've gone through books by Paul J. Nahin and William Dunham and found them consistently well written.

Onto more literary works, I would recommend Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott to anyone, whether they're interested in mathematics or not. I've heard Ian Stewart wrote a sequel of sorts, and I hope to read that soon. The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition was excellent, adding extensively to the notes I enjoyed in the Wordsworth Classics edition I first read.

I haven't come across any really terrible mathematical literature (maybe because it being such a demanding venture, no one steps into it lightly, which is a good thing), but one complaint I have is that a lot of popular accounts of mathematical subjects tend to oversimplify and omit material to such an extent that they're hardly about maths anymore. For example, with prime number theory, while the literature is very good, it doesn't often broach too deeply at all into the actual subject, resorting instead to much handwaving. Such books might be better suited to complement an actual text with historical notes and commentary (which tend to be very well done). This underestimation of the reader (which is what I think it is), might particularly come from mathematicians themselves, rather than someone like a science journalist writing about maths, which is really unfortunate.

Another note is on problem books. There are those that come with short expositions, and this is certainly helpful, but much of the time the problem selections are very idiosyncratic (perhaps catering towards some competition or other), rather than establishing structure and patterns so the techniques are built upon and extendable to a more wide variety of problems.

I tried 3 or 4 times to get into Simon Singh's Code Book (the one beginning with Mary, Queen of Scotland), and each time got a bit further before I lost interest. Turned it back to the library again today.

I have heard that his "Big Bang" is good, will look at it at the library.

By the way, does anyone know how to make current topics and discussions show up on the group's homepage? This one's homepage says explicitly that there are no discussions or topics at all. I have considered deleting the group a few times because of this, then remembered to click on all topics, which brings me to the 5 group discussions. Just seems odd the way Goodreads does things.

Nicolle wrote: "Which books can any one recommend or advise us to stay away from?

I personally love Simon Singh, his books The Code Book..."

Theresa

I give a book report on pop math books in my classes. When I get back to my computer I will post several of the more popular choices by students.

Hi Robby,

I'm interested in seeing your report on the choices by students. Admittedly, I haven't looked anywhere else on the group to see if you posted it. So if you didn't, please do, and if you did, please ignore me, I'll find it soon. :)

Thanks
Theresa

Two books in mathematical memories.

The first one, Adventures of a Mathematician from 'Stanislaw Ulam', a polish mathematician, and among other situations He lived the Manhattan Projet from inside. Warning to his interesting reflection about the lenguage (english, french, german, and so on) that a mathematician thinks, and the particularities of his/her work.

And secondly, The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician, from the french André Weil, well know for his sister the philosopher Simone Weil and also as founder member of Bourbaki team. Unforgetable experience in Finland's jail, sentenced to dead as russian spy.

Poincare's Conjecture by Donal O' Shea and Numbers Rule the World by Fung

All the books mentioned by all posters are great reads.

Hi Adam,

For Zero, did you mean John Milner's book, Kazimir Malevich and the art of geometry, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996?

That's the book that came up when I searched for Zero in the university library. I was not good in geometry, but the book description sounds interesting. Might see if I can get it Monday night.

I remember trying to get through Innumeracy, but not why I didn't care for it. I might try it again.

The library shows a couple more of Paulos' books - Beyond Numeracy, and a Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.

Theresa

Adam wrote: "I've read and enjoyed Letters to a Young Mathematician, The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless, Zero, The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved & Why Numbers..."

Hi Theresa,

I've read Zero which Adam linked to in his post. It was a while back now, but I remember enjoying it.

Innumeracy was similarly hard for me to continue with. I should probably give it another try!

I'm enjoying another of Havil's popular books these days- Nonplussed!: Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas.
It deals with paradoxical or surprising results, mostly taken from combinatorics and probability.

I mentioned Nahin favourably in my last post, but I've since come across less than stellar efforts from him. An Imaginary Tale: The Story of the Square Root of Minus One, which I picked up eagerly, could have been better given the subject matter.

A truly fantastic little text I lately read with great interest despite having reviled geometry (which is the subject of about half the book) at school is Fallacies in Mathematics. Very clear, with surprises and fine points and even its share of amusement.

Eli Maor's books also deserve a mention.

I have just finished The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity. Good book and fairly easy.