There's a children's book called The Boy Who Loved Math: The improbable life of Paul Erdös [0]. I ordered a copy when looking for some books to get my son interested in math beyond counting and simple arithmetic.
My son is 3 1/2, and he loves this book. He loves that there was a kid who loved numbers so much he spent his whole life studying them. He loves that he gets to see a boy grow into an adult, who grows into an old man. If you want to share your love of math with a kid, Erdös' story is a great one to share. It's also a great conversation starter about how much or how little to focus on any one thing. I love knowing Erdös' story, but I'm not sure I'd like to be him.
If you're looking for math books for kids, I highly recommend "The Cat in Numberland". It's an illustrated story that touches upon the different kinds of infinities, and even describes Cantor's diagonalization argument in a very friendly, intuitive way. Most adults would also benefit from reading this book.
I don't have a huge monitor (22 inches) but I found it difficult to read because the lines were so wide. They should set a fixed width for the content and then I'd agree with you.
They shouldn't. If you want to make a wide page narrower you can always resize your browser. If I want to make a narrow page wider, there's no way for me to do that.
If you want to make a narrow page wider, you can open the Inspector and change the width.
The argument is the same, and they're both invalid. It takes way too much effort. I'm not resizing a window I use for everything just so I can fullscreen it when I switch to another tab and resize it again when I return.
> "If you want to make a narrow page wider, you can open the Inspector and change the width."
The difference is that one is accessible to the average user. Outside of Developerland, most people don't even realize that the page they are viewing has a source which can be inspected or changed.
It takes way too much effort to resize a browser window? It's hardly comparable to going into the source of the page and messing around with values in there.
I'm pretty certain my mum, my daughter and pretty much everyone who's ever used a computer can do the former. I doubt that too many can do the latter.
My High School mathematics teacher introduced me to this book 6-7 years ago. Erdös was a hacker in the Mathematician's world. His throughput for establishing hundreds of conjectures and proofs reminds me of collegiate Hackathons in our programming community. This book might make you fall in love with Mathematics, or at least provide an undeniable appreciation for getting shit done.
Oh man, I really loved this biography in the 9th grade. It was the first time I was exposed to the concept of mathematics being beautiful. I can't recommend this book enough. Also, I loved Paul Hoffman's biography of the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont as well.
A couple of years after this article a book about Erdős appeared called My Brain is Open. If you enjoyed this article I highly recommend the book about this fascinating man and his unique life. It even has some good explanations of some of the problems he worked on.
The information about amphetamines made an impression. His friends at times tried to discourage him, but he claimed that without them, he could create no mathematics. Given his colossal output, this means that a significant part of the landscape of modern mathematics owes it existence to this drug.
How he learned the drug would help him, and how he got his hands on it, and when and how his use of it started, are questions I'm very curious about, but the book doesn't go there.
>The information about amphetamines made an impression. His friends at times tried to discourage him, but he claimed that without them, he could create no mathematics. Given his colossal output, this means that a significant part of the landscape of modern mathematics owes it existence to this drug.
Erdős was a heavy user of many other stimulants (like coffee), but only started to use antidepressants and then amphetamines in 1971 when he was 58 after his mother died. He was already established as a first rate mathematician (he should have won the Fields Medal), and using amphetamines to work 19 hours a day was his way of coping with the death of his mother.
I loved this book, and can highly recommend it. Take a look at the bottom right picture on his Wikipedia page [1], where he is talking about math to a 10 year old Terence Tao, who is now one of the great minds of his generation. I think that is Erdos in short. He had an influence on so many people across the world.
Thank your friend for writing a wonderful biography about a beautiful soul. That book really opened up the world for me by introducing me to a lot of the history and ideas. I'd dropped out of school many years ago and never learned Calculus. After that book, I was inspired to take evening classes and finally learn calculus. As it turned out, I needed to take a few refresher classes before I got to calculus, but I did and I finished up to calc 3. I've been meaning to go back and do some linear algebra and differential equations... Hopefully, I will go back soon.
Tell your friend he's doing the SF's work. Then again, maybe he's doing the devil's work if the SF is bent on keeping all the good theorems to himself.
My son is 3 1/2, and he loves this book. He loves that there was a kid who loved numbers so much he spent his whole life studying them. He loves that he gets to see a boy grow into an adult, who grows into an old man. If you want to share your love of math with a kid, Erdös' story is a great one to share. It's also a great conversation starter about how much or how little to focus on any one thing. I love knowing Erdös' story, but I'm not sure I'd like to be him.
[0] - http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Who-Loved-Math/dp/1596433078/r...