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   Tommaths (he/him) (teakayb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:24:38 JST Tommaths (he/him)

   Please recommend #books about #maths that *aren't* about teaching it.

   I'm looking for books that someone might sit and read for pleasure rather than for academic reasons (so not really textbooks, but I guess there might be some really compelling textbooks out there). Fact or fiction. Feel free to define "about maths" however you like (there may be points for really inventive interpretations). They might only be loosely about maths, but I'll set the criterion that someone who thinks they're not into maths would recognise it as maths.

   Go!

   • Embed this notice
     mark (atleagle@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:24:37 JST mark

     in reply to

     @TeaKayB flatland by Edwin a Abbott

     Code by Charles Petzold

     Zero by Charles Seife

   • Embed this notice
     mark (atleagle@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:32:40 JST mark

     in reply to

     @TeaKayB I have a book called chaos, which may be the root of that story. Can't remember the author right now

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     Tommaths (he/him) (teakayb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:32:42 JST Tommaths (he/him)

     in reply to

     I'm going to come in from what I think is left-field with Jurassic Park. It's alluded to in the movie, but the novel is an allegory of chaos theory, a main character who's a rockstar mathematician who isn't your classic tweed-wearing, socially inept movie mathematician. Even the chapter headings are successive iterations of a fractal rather than the standard sequence of integers.

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     mark (atleagle@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:35:27 JST mark

     in reply to

     • Jay

     @WhiteCatTamer @TeaKayB I dropped this title here as well. It's such an interesting history

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     Jay (whitecattamer@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 05-Sep-2024 08:35:28 JST Jay

     in reply to

     @TeaKayB I highly recommend “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea” by Charles Seife.