The Best Writing on Mathematics 2016

Mircea Pitici

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780691175294
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400885602
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Mathematics General
• Index: Mathematics

The year's finest mathematics writing 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 2016 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 Burkard Polster shows how to invent your own variants of the Spot It! card game, Steven Strogatz presents young Albert Einstein's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, Joseph Dauben and Marjorie Senechal find a treasure trove of math in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Andrew Gelman explains why much scientific research based on statistical testing is spurious. In other essays, Brian Greene discusses the evolving assumptions of the physicists who developed the mathematical underpinnings of string theory, Jorge Almeida examines the misperceptions of people who attempt to predict lottery results, and Ian Stewart offers advice to authors who aspire to write successful math books for general readers. And there's 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
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Mathematics and Teaching
• In Defense of Pure Mathematics
• G. H. Hardy: Mathematical Biologist
• The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics
• Stacking Wine Bottles Revisited
• The Way the Billiard Ball Bounces
• The Intersection Game
• Tonight! Epic Math Battles: Counting vs. Matching
• Mathematicians Chase Moonshine’s Shadow
• The Impenetrable Proof
• A Proof That Some Spaces Can’t Be Cut
• Einstein’s First Proof
• Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics
• The Pioneering Role of the Sierpinski Gasket
• Fractals as Photographs
• Math at the Met
• Common Sense about the Common Core
• Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst
• Teaching Applied Mathematics
• Circular Reasoning: Who First Proved that C Divided by d Is a Constant?
• A Medieval Mystery: Nicole Oresme’s Concept of Curvitas
• The Myth of Leibniz’s Proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
• The Spirograph and Mathematical Models from Nineteenth-Century Germany
• What Does “Depth” Mean in Mathematics?
• Finding Errors in Big Data
• Programs and Probability
• Lottery Perception
• Why Acknowledging Uncertainty Can Make You a Better Scientist
• For Want of a Nail: Why Unnecessarily Long Tests May Be Impeding the Progress of Western Civilization
• How to Write a General Interest Mathematics Book
• Contributors
• Notable Writings
• Acknowledgments
• Credits