Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
User Journal

Journal SlashDotDotDot's Journal: Follow up to "Mathematics Reading List"

A recently posted Ask Slashdot: Mathematics Reading List For High School Students? generated a long discussion filled with good (and bad) suggestions. It took a lot of work to read the discussion, so I though it would be useful to make a cheat sheet. Below are all the books--according to my own unscientific survey--that were recommended by at least two people, sorted by the number of recommendations. I probably missed a few as there were dozens of single mentions.

17
Hofstadter, Douglas R.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

6
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Two other books were mentioned as good follow-ups to this book: "Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So" by Ian Stewart and "Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe" by Dionys Burger, Isaac Asimov, and Cornelie J. Rheinbold. "Flatland" also generated some discussion about whether the author was a sexist and whether it would matter if he were. Someone suggested reading "The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Ian Stewart to dispel the misconception.

5
Singh, Simon
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

5
Singh, Simon & Lynch, John
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem

5
Gleick, James
Chaos: Making a New Science

5
Paulos, John Allen
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

4
Huff, Darrell
How to Lie with Statistics

4
Korner, Tom
The Pleasures of Counting

4
Feynman, Richard
The Feynman Lectures on Physics

4
Dunham, William
Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics

4
Polya, G.
How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

3
Bell, E. T.
Men of Mathematics

3
Levitt, Stephen & Dubner, Stephen
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

2
Hardy, G. H
A Mathematician's Apology

2
Hogben, Lancelot
Mathematics for the Million

2
Derbyshire, John
Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra

2
Mandelbrot, Benoit
The Fractal Geometry of Nature

2
Euclid
Euclid's Unabridged Elements

2
Garrity, Thomas A. & Pedersen, Lori
All the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for Graduate School

2
Poundstone, William
Prisoner's Dilemma

2
Derbyshire, John
Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

2
Livio, Mario
The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number

2
Feynmann, Richard
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

2
Courant, Richard; Robbins, Herbert & Stewart, Ian
What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods

2
Seife, Charles
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

2
Nasar, Sylvia
A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

2
Kaplan, Ellen & Robert
The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero

2
Mlodinow, Leonard
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

2
Hoffman, Paul
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story Of Paul Erdos And The Search For Mathematical Truth

2
Paulos, John Allen
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

2
Tahan, Malba & Baquero, Patricia Reid
The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures

2
Hawking, Stephen
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History

1
Shannon, Claude & Weaver, Warren
The Mathematical Theory of Communication
This book doesn't meet my criteria, since it was only mentioned once, but since I was the mention-er, it earns a special dispensation.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Follow up to "Mathematics Reading List"

Comments Filter:

HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

Working...