The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015

Mircea Pitici

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780691169651
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400873371
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Mathematics General
• Index: Mathematics

The year's finest writing on mathematics from around the world

This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates.

Here David Hand explains why we should actually expect unlikely coincidences to happen; Arthur Benjamin and Ethan Brown unveil techniques for improvising custom-made magic number squares; Dana Mackenzie describes how mathematicians are making essential contributions to the development of synthetic biology; Steven Strogatz tells us why it's worth writing about math for people who are alienated from it; Lisa Rougetet traces the earliest written descriptions of Nim, a popular game of mathematical strategy; Scott Aaronson looks at the unexpected implications of testing numbers for randomness; and much, much more.

In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes a bibliography of other notable writings and an introduction by the editor, Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it is headed.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• A Dusty Discipline
• How Puzzles Made Us Human
• Let the Games Continue
• Challenging Magic Squares for Magicians
• Candy Crush’s Puzzling Mathematics
• Chaos on the Billiard Table
• Juggling with Numbers
• The Quest for Randomness
• Synthetic Biology, Real Mathematics
• At the Far Ends of a New Universal Law
• Twisted Math and Beautiful Geometry
• Kenichi Miura’s Water Wheel, or The Dance of the Shapes of Constant Width
• Dürer: Disguise, Distance, Disagreements, and Diagonals!
• The Quaternion Group as a Symmetry Group
• The Steiner-Lehmus Angle-Bisector Theorem
• Key Ideas and Memorability in Proof
• The Future of High School Mathematics
• Demystifying the Math Myth: Analyzing the Contributing Factors for the Achievement Gap between Chinese and U.S. Students
• The Pigeonhole Principle, Two Centuries before Dirichlet
• A Prehistory of Nim
• Gödel, Gentzen, Goodstein: The Magic Sound of a G-String
• Global and Local
• Mathematical Beauty, Understanding, and Discovery
• A Guide for the Perplexed: What Mathematicians Need to Know to Understand Philosophers of Mathematics
• Writing about Math for the Perplexed and the Traumatized
• Is Big Data Enough? A Reflection on the Changing Role of Mathematics in Applications
• The Statistical Crisis in Science
• Statistics and the Ontario Lottery Retailer Scandal
• Never Say Never
• Contributors
• Notable Writings
• Acknowledgments
• Credits