{"id":120,"date":"2009-02-09T01:22:12","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T06:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elegans.uky.edu\/blog\/?p=120"},"modified":"2009-02-09T01:22:12","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T06:22:12","slug":"rare-as-a-total-eclipse-a-useful-slashdot-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Rare as a total eclipse–a useful Slashdot article"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today Slashdot had an ‘Ask Slashdot’ post asking the question “Mathematics Reading List For High School Students?”<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

But today a rare gem, an interesting question of general interest on \/. worth reading. Here’s a summary of the suggestions:<\/p>\n

(the obvious: Flatland, GEB)<\/p>\n

How to Lie with Statistics<\/em> by Darrell Huff, 1954
\nMen of Mathematics<\/em> by E. T. Bell
\nHow to Think Like a Mathematician: A Companion to Undergraduate Mathematics<\/em> by Kevin Houston
\nAll the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for Graduate School<\/em> by Thomas A. Garrity
\nPrisoner’s Dilemma<\/em> by William Poundstone
\nSchaum’s Outline of Linear Algebra<\/em> by Seymour Lipschutz
\nThe Feynmann Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands
\nSurely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman<\/em> by Richard Feynman
\nBringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions<\/em> by Ben Mezrich
\nThe Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number<\/em> by Mario Livio
\nFermat’s Last Theorem<\/em> by Simon Singh
\nThe Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography<\/em> by Simon Singh
\nThe Codebreakers: The Comprehensive Story of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet<\/em> by David Kahn
\nAgainst the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk<\/em> by Peter Bernstein
\nKnots : Mathematics with a Twist<\/em> by A. B. Sossinsky
\nThe Little Schemer<\/em> by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
\nThe Pleasures of Counting<\/em> by Thomas William K\u00c3\u00b6rner
\nInnumeracy and A Mathematician reads the Newspaper<\/em> by John Allen Paulos
\nThe Shape of Space<\/em> by Jeff Weeks
\n‘e’: The Story of A Number<\/em> by Eli Maor
\nWhat is mathematics?<\/em> by Courant and Robbins
\nA Pathway Into Number Theory<\/em> by R. P. Burn
\nZero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea<\/em> by Charles Seife
\nA Long Way From Euclid<\/em> by Constance Reid<\/p>\n

and to add a few not mentioned:
\nChaos<\/em> by James Gleick
\nFive Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics<\/em> by Michael Guillen
\nMathematical People: Profiles and Interviews<\/em> by Donald J. Albers and Gerald L. Alexanderson<\/p>\n

And last and best, any of the books of Martin Gardner’s Recreational Mathematics columns from Scientific American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}