A Mathematician S Apology
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Mathematics without Apologies
Author: Michael Harris
language: en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date: 2017-05-30
An insightful reflection on the mathematical soul What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers—for the sake of truth, beauty, and practical applications—this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, he touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly entertaining, Mathematics without Apologies takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.
A Mathematician's Lament
Author: Paul Lockhart
language: en
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Release Date: 2009-04-01
“One of the best critiques of current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen, written by a first-class research mathematician who elected to devote his teaching career to K-12 education.” —Keith Devlin, NPR’s “Math Guy” A brilliant research mathematician reveals math to be a creative art form on par with painting, poetry, and sculpture, and rejects the standard anxiety-producing teaching methods used in most schools today. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike, altering the way we think about math forever. Paul Lockhart is the author of Arithmetic, Measurement, and A Mathematician’s Lament. He has taught mathematics at Brown University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and to K-12 level students at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.
A Disappearing Number
Author: Simon McBurney (Theatre Complicite)
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date: 2012-06-21
A Disappearing Number takes as its starting point the story of one of the most mysterious and romantic mathematical collaborations of all time. Simultaneously a narrative and an enquiry, the production crosses three continents and several histories, to weave a provocative theatrical pattern about our relentless compulsion to understand. A man mourns the loss of his lover, a mathematician mourns her own fate. A businessman travels from Los Angeles to Chennai pursuing the future; a physicist in CERN looks for it too. The mathematician G.H. Hardy seeks to comprehend the ideas of the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan in the chilly English surroundings of Cambridge during the First World War. Ramanujan looks to create some of the most complex mathematical patterns of all time. Threaded through this pattern of stories and ideas are questions. About mathematics and beauty; imagination and the nature of infinity; about what is continuous and what is permanent; how we are attached to the past and how we affect the future; how we create and how we love. The book features an essay by Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, and an introduction by Simon McBurney. The Complicité production was an astonishing success during its run at the Barbican, London in Spring 2007, winning The Evening Standard's Best New Play Award 2007. Called ' Mesmerizing' by the New York Times, 'A Disappearing Number' is a brilliant play, aided with original music composed by the award winning DJ, producer and writer Nitin Sawhney. 'A Disappearing Number' was revived at the Novello Theatre, London in autumn 2010.