Rare as a total eclipse–a useful Slashdot article
Today Slashdot had an ‘Ask Slashdot’ post asking the question “Mathematics Reading List For High School Students?” Slashdot reader comments usually start are typically dismal and often worse. The only useful comments I’ve seen come to questions both technical and obscure. Looking for a Scheme compiler for the Commodore 64 or tools for hacking a router and Slashdot commenters can help.
But today a rare gem, an interesting question of general interest on /. worth reading. Here’s a summary of the suggestions:
(the obvious: Flatland, GEB)
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, 1954
Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell
How to Think Like a Mathematician: A Companion to Undergraduate Mathematics by Kevin Houston
All the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for Graduate School by Thomas A. Garrity
Prisoner’s Dilemma by William Poundstone
Schaum’s Outline of Linear Algebra by Seymour Lipschutz
The Feynmann Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich
The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number by Mario Livio
Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive Story of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter Bernstein
Knots : Mathematics with a Twist by A. B. Sossinsky
The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
The Pleasures of Counting by Thomas William Körner
Innumeracy and A Mathematician reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos
The Shape of Space by Jeff Weeks
‘e’: The Story of A Number by Eli Maor
What is mathematics? by Courant and Robbins
A Pathway Into Number Theory by R. P. Burn
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
A Long Way From Euclid by Constance Reid
and to add a few not mentioned:
Chaos by James Gleick
Five Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics by Michael Guillen
Mathematical People: Profiles and Interviews by Donald J. Albers and Gerald L. Alexanderson
And last and best, any of the books of Martin Gardner’s Recreational Mathematics columns from Scientific American.