
The nicest math book I own - acangiano
http://math-blog.com/2008/12/22/the-nicest-math-book-i-own/
======
tome
I used to read Tim's expository writings religiously. The old ones can be
found at:

<http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/mathsindex.html>

and the newer stuff is on his blog:

<http://gowers.wordpress.com/>

------
anewaccountname
I never by a first-edition math book. The second-edition will have tons of
changes due to valuable feedback, along with typically the biggest wave of
corrections of any increment in edition.

~~~
kqr2
But if everyone employs the same strategy, there probably won't be a second
edition.

If it's truly a good book, I don't mind buying an updated 2nd edition.

~~~
captainobvious
It's a collective action problem. I'm just giving the my Ayn Rand-esque
solution to the problem, whereby I look out for myself and end up
unintentionally screwing everyone else. =(

------
eipiman
Another beautiful math book is Visual Complex Analysis,
[http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Complex-Analysis-Tristan-
Needha...](http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Complex-Analysis-Tristan-
Needham/dp/0198534469/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229989589&sr=8-1)
Too many modern math texts are utterly alegebraic. VCA embraces geometry to
great effect.

------
yan
Threads like these are the reason I adore hacker news sometimes.

~~~
andreyf
Comments like these add nothing to said threads.

~~~
hhm
Perhaps they give users the motivation to submit other interesting links like
this one.

~~~
senthil_rajasek
Thats why you have karma points. The original comment does not add any value.

~~~
astine
I prefer real attention and praise to a number.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Personally, knowing that Tim Gowers had something to do with it is
recommendation enough. A gifted expositor and brilliant mathematician, I'm
ordering this today.

~~~
kalid
I have on briefly heard of him, but love reading well-done explanations. This
is going on the wish list.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Recommend you also read his on-line stuff as listed above. Tim is one of the
clearest and most insightful writers I know, as well as being thoroughly nice
to and tolerant of lesser mortals such as myself.

------
vizard
A somewhat related book I recommend is The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose.

~~~
yan
It's staring at me from my book shelf, laughing that I won't get around to
starting it.

~~~
tricky
start reading it tonight. it is an amazing book.

~~~
yan
I'm sure. I read 'emperor's new mind' and loved it for the most part. I have
quite a bit of a backlog of books that are earlier in the queue before I get
to it.

Which reminds me, we should consider the semantics of starting a
science/math/etc book club dedicated to important books and concepts.

------
jhayes
If you want to see some sample articles first, you can login to
<http://pcm.tandtproductions.com/> with U/P : guest/PCM - he put this
information up on his blog a year ago perhaps. Look under 'Resources/Sample
Articles'.

------
gjm11
As well as Timothy Gowers (who is, yes, an absolutely first-rate mathematician
and a very good expositor too), the PCM has a bunch of contributions from
Terry Tao (blog at <http://terrytao.wordpress.com/>;
[http://terrytao.wordpress.com/?s=princeton+companion+to+math...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/?s=princeton+companion+to+mathematics)
to find pre-production versions of several of his PCM articles) who is also a
Fields Medallist, a very good expositor, and a blogger.

------
programnature
This book looks awesome. Mathematics is so vast that as a student its hard to
know what classes you should take, or even what the map of the territory looks
like. That is one of the reasons I got frustrated with my pure math BS.

The Russian school put out some pretty massive volumes, like

[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Its-Content-Methods-
Meanin...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Its-Content-Methods-
Meaning/dp/0486409163/)

but I found those to be a little too caught up in the proposition/proof cycle
to be useful as a guide to the uninitiated.

------
brandong
I'm not a math guru by any means. I got as far business cal in college.
However, I have always been fascinated with math (and intensely wished it
would come easier for me.)

That being said, if I wanted to slowly build up a mathematical foundation
(maybe half hour a day), would buying a book like this be right place to
start? Or should I be looking elsewhere?

~~~
antiform
It certainly depends on what you're interested in. This is more of an
encyclopedia of mathematics than a textbook. If you want an broad idea of many
different fields of mathematics and the history behind them, presented in a
well-written and relatively elementary style, this is the book for you.
However, the problem with being relatively elementary is that most of the
articles merely skim the surface of whatever subject they are describing.

If you want to actually be able to solve problems using math (the fun part,
for most amateur mathematicians), a textbook would be a better bet. If you
stopped math at business calculus and want a great introduction to the
calculus that mathematicians use, I wholeheartedly recommend Michael Spivak's
_Calculus_ as a next step.

------
kokofoo
If you want to boggle your mind this Christmas I suggest you read GEB. It's
not just Math, but Philosophy, AI, programming, logic, human mind, etc. I
started reading it last year, and I'm still reading it this year, probably
will be next year, year...

~~~
cabalamat
I second this recommendation, though I suspect most people at HN have already
read it. I can also recommend two other books by Hofstadter: _Metamagical
Themas_ , and _Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies_

------
Maro
A very good physics book is 'Visual Quantum Mechanics' and its sequel,
'Advanced Visual Quantum Mechanics'. Don't let the name fool you, this is not
a picture book, it's a real mathematical physics books, but with the clearest
exposition of QM I'm aware of. It's called "Visual" because of the
accompanying Mathematica visualizations.

------
Maro
Another highly aesthetic, mostly fun book is Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of
Science.

~~~
tokenadult
I enjoyed reading most of ANKoS, but it is a very different book from the book
under review. I trust a collection of articles edited by Timothy Gowers as a
guide to the latest carefully considered ideas in mathematics much more than I
trust Wolfram's interesting but idiosyncratic personal account of the
foundations of mathematics.

Here is a link to links to multiple reviews of A New Kind of Science. Some of
the reviews are by quite eminent mathematicians.

<http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~eclark/ANKOS_reviews.html>

~~~
gjm11
Cosma Shalizi's review is particularly good because (1) Shalizi knows a lot
about the stuff Wolfram is writing about and (2) it is called "A rare blend of
monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity".

------
icefox
Too bad the shell on the cover doesn't show a fibonacci spiral.

<http://www.shallowsky.com/blog/science/fibonautilus.html>

------
gaius
I've ordered it (GBP 60!) but it'll have to go a long way to beat _Engineering
Mathematics_ by K. A. Stroud.

------
epicurus
My favorite maths book is "little rudin" - Principles of Mathematical Analysis
by Walter Rudin - you can just spend hours reading the same page over and over
...

------
aruljose
The comments in the original blogpost are moderated. At present no comment is
published. Could it be a paid advt?

~~~
acangiano
Last night I went to sleep early, so I approved the comments during my morning
break. I moderate comments in order to prevent spam and idiots. For example,
the only comment on this post that was rejected was along the lines of "You
are gay because you read math". I refuse to publish stuff like that.

------
abl
Highly recommend Martin Gardner's books. One of my favorite childhood authors.

------
logjam
This book is a rarity: a comprehensive survey, with rigor, yet gentle and
welcoming to the amateur. The writing is _wonderful_.

One oddity: I keep looking for a mention of Paul Erdos in the book, and
haven't found one.

~~~
kqr2
Timothy Gowers has an Erdos number of 4.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdos_number>

[http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/William-Timothy-
Gow...](http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/William-Timothy-Gowers)

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I didn't believe you, but I've been and checked. Even though he was supervised
by Bollobas (Erdos Number 1) he appears never to have co-authored with him, an
unusual situation. So it seems that my Erdos Number is smaller than his -
perhaps I should offer to co-author a paper with him. I'd get the kudos of co-
authoring with a Fields Medal winner (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal> ) and he'd lower his Erdos Number
to 3.

