<p>Check out the artofproblemsolving website for more info on this program. It attracts students from all over. Joel Lewis (Harvard) wrote a glowing review of his experience there on the aops website above.</p>
<p>My mom got the Princeton Companion to Mathmatics for S1 for the holidays. He was utterly speechless for a full minute. (Takes a lot to shock him!) He says it is everything he has heard about it and has been reading it for the better part of the past 24 hours. ;)</p>
<p>I've tried the search this forum thing, but struck out. Hopefully some kind soul here can guide me to that thread that suggested a number of excellent books for higher math enthusiast.
Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Whoever got me here thank you!</p>
<p>washingtonpost.com</a> - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines</p>
<p>This was reviewed in this past Sunday's Washington Post Book World. If I had any time to read these days, I'd have bought it for myself. Instead it's on its way to one of my brothers.</p>
<p><sorry--thought the="" title="" and="" author="" would="" show="" up="" in="" link.="" it's="" "is="" god="" a="" mathematician?"="" by="" mario="" livio.="" addresses="" basic="" question="" of="" whether="" we="" invented="" or="" discovered="" math.=""></sorry--thought></p>
<p>The</a> Structure of Everything - washingtonpost.com</p>
<p>There ya go, and thanks for bringing it to my attention!</p>
<p>Fortunes Formula, by William Poundston -- how a gun-toting UT grad who worked at Bell Labs came up with gambling/stock market formulaes</p>
<p>The 1st 10-12 chapters of "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose (and probably the later chapters as well since it goes full-bore with the maths, instead of using tired analogies and things as with other pop science books) - probably the best-selling book nobody ever reads. Your S might just find Physics interesting as well after that =p.</p>
<p>Another good one: David Acheson, 1098 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics. It's short, funny (it's illustrated with cartoons) and explains some of the most complex ideas in higher mathematics and number theory with both clarity and contagious enthusiasm. It really makes you understand why mathematicians talk about certain ideas with terms like elegant or beautiful. </p>
<p>The last chapter, where he explains one of THE most beautiful equations is mind-blowing. For a little hint of the flavor:</p>
<p>1089</a> and all that</p>
<p>frankchn, my son is currently reading "The Road to Reality." Great book.</p>
<p>I'm late to this thread, but as a math major who washed out in college, I distinctly remember reading the Bell book (#47) in Jr. High--I'm afraid I didn't really quite have the background to fully get it. I also started a Discrete Math class with Prof. Knuth in college but then chickened out (I was a lowly bio major at that point). Some of the rest of these books sound amazing!</p>
<p>Bumping this up in case anyone else needs it for holiday shopping this year!</p>
<p>(I’ve just ordered Infinity and the Mind and Fantasia Mathematica. Shhhhh! Don’t tell S!)</p>
<p>
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<p>Papadimitriou’s book is actually quite good, but it’s a fairly hardcore grad level textbook and not really an introduction…</p>
<p>I liked “Journey into Genius” as a teenager, the math in it is fairly straightforward.</p>
<p>I’ll try to remember some others later…</p>
<p>Fortunes Formula, by William Poundston – how a gun-toting UT grad who worked at Bell Labs came up with gambling/stock market formulaes"</p>
<hr>
<p>This is an entertaining book.</p>
<p>Son loved Sipser in his foundations course last Spring. I ordered the Princeton Companion last night from Amazon. He’s gliding in for a smooth landing to the end of the semester and he’s worn out - the course mix this semester was probably a bit heavier than optimal. I think that he wants to veg out for the winter break which means just preparing for his spring classes (reading the texts).</p>
<p>I’ve also ordered Journeys through Genius. This holiday’s books are rather heavily tilted toward linguistics, and with only 11 books for Christmas, he’s likely to run out of things to read about… oh, January 4, but oh, well!!</p>
<p>S1 still loves the Princeton Companion my mom got him last year. Warning: make sure your kid brings home an empty suitcase – the book is big and will take up lots of one’s weight allowance!</p>
<p>Princeton Companion arrived today. People in the office were drooling over it (gives you an idea of the people I work with). This looks like something that I will enjoy reading too. It actually might make a good reference in getting a superficial view of a topic.</p>
<p>I like the part in the preface that said that the original intent was to make it usable for high-school graduates. I went through the first few pages and thought that our daughter could read this. Then I got to page 14 where it uses predicate calculus and thought: nope. I think that very few college undergraduates run into predicate calculus (CS, Math, CE, maybe EE, Philosophy majors should see it).</p>
<p>I started reading the book last night and it’s addictive. A guy at work CS Phd plans to buy it to read. He looked through my copy and said that the math is at just the right level for him. It seems a wonderful book for math and CS majors as there should be far less that just flies over your head. I read the overview of math areas and had varying familiarity with all of them. I found the explanations understandable but I wonder how many people would feel the same way outside of math/CS (and related majors).</p>
<p>It felt like reading good literature and I found the reading, at least so far, to be quick. It’s a thousand pages so it would take a while to read.</p>