New Books In Mathematics

From the pyramids of Giza, to quasicrystals, to the proportions of the human face, the golden ratio has an infinite capacity to generate shapes with exquisite properties. This book invites you to take a new look at this timeless topic, with a compilation of research and information worthy of a text book, accompanied by over 200 beautiful color illustrations that transform this into the ultimate coffee table book. In The Golden Ratio: The Divine Beauty of Mathematics (Race Point Press, 2018), Gary Meisner shares the results of his twenty-year investigation and collaboration with thousands of people across the globe in dozens of professions and walks of life. The evidence will close the gaps of understanding related to many claims of the golden ratio’s appearances and applications, and present new findings to take our knowledge further yet. Whoever you are, and whatever you may know about this topic, you’ll find something new, interesting, and informative in this book, and may find yourself challenged to see, a

Today I talked to Julian Havil about his latest book Curves for the Mathematically Curious: An Anthology of the Unpredictable, Historical, Beautiful, and Romantic (Princeton University Press, 2019). You don’t have to be mathematically curious to appreciate Julian’s talent for weaving mathematics and history together – but mathematical curiosity and a year or two of calculus will greatly add to your enjoyment of it. This is not your father’s – or grandfather’s – standard collection of conic sections, with perhaps a few curves of higher degree thrown in. This is a collection of elegant, unusual, and mathematically significant curves, chosen by a connoisseur, and beautifully presented for your delectation. You may recognize a few old favorites – the catenary and the normal curve come to mind – but many of the others will be new to you, as they were to me. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and mathematics, they created hybrid models that would have a lasting impact on applied science. In Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), a richly illustrated comparative study of this transformative period, Margaret E. Schotte charts more than two hundred years of navigational history as she investigates how mariners solved the challenges of navigating beyond sight of land. She begins by outlining the influential sixteenth-century Iberian model for training and certifying nautical practitioners. She takes us into a Dutch bookshop stocked with maritime manuals and a French trigonometry lesson devoted to the idea that "navigat

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it. How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017

The institutional history of mathematics in the United States comprises several entangled traditions—military, civil, academic, industrial—each of which merits its own treatment. David Lindsay Roberts, adjunct professor of mathematics at Prince George's Community College, takes a very different approach. His unique book, Republic of Numbers: Unexpected Stories of Mathematical Americans through History(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), anchors 20 biographical chapters to a decadal series of events, whose mathematical significance could not often have been anticipated. These short biographies range from the inauguration of military and civil engineering (Sylvanus Thayer) and the textbook industry (Catharine Beecher and Joseph Ray) to the influence of geopolitics during and after the Cold War (Joaquin Basilio Diaz, John F. Nash Jr.), and over the course of the book the subjects witness the professionalization of the research community (Charles H. Davis), radical expansions of educational access (Kelly Mille

Our guest today is Al Posamentier, the lead author of Tools to Help Your Children Learn Math (WSPC, 2019). Helping your children with math is one of the most important things a parent can do to further their children’s educational progress, and Al has teamed with other math educators, psychologists, and counselors to write a book which many will find extremely helpful in what is often a difficult and frustrating job.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1667 to 1676, a pivotal controversy played out among several mathematical luminaries of the time, partly in the proceedings of the Royal Society but partly in private correspondence. The controversy concerned whether an infamous problem of Ancient Greek geometry, the quadrature of the central conic sections (better known as squaring the circle), could be solved using the classical tools of straightedge and compass. While its impossibility would not be rigorously proven for two more centuries, the theoretical and philosophical implications of these attempts to settle the issue were constitutive of the contemporaneous development of calculus. Dr. Davide Crippa's book The Impossibility of Squaring the Circle in the 17th Century (Birkhäuser, 2019) is a deep dive into this little-covered episode in the modern European history of mathematics. He examines the advances of Gregory and Leibniz in full mathematical detail, clarifying in current notation and elegant figures the steps and missteps of their constructi

Today I talked with Chris Bernhardt about his book Quantum Computing for Everyone (MIT Press, 2019). This is a book that involves a lot of mathematics, but most of it is accessible to anyone who survived high school algebra.  Even a math-phobic can read the book, skip the math, and then more than hold his or her own in any but the highest-level discussion of quantum computing.  For those of us who love math, the underlying math is elegantly simple and beautifully presented – and the same can be said of the non-mathematical material. as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices w

Our guest today is Kartik Hosanagar, the author of A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control(Viking, 2019). This is one of those rare books that I think everyone can read and I think everyone should read. In fact, knowledge of algorithms can in some sense be considered to be the literacy of the 21st century, and the author has written a book which can greatly held advance this type of literacy. If you want to become 21st-century literate, you should read this instructive and immensely enjoyable book.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew C. A. Elliott‘s Is That a Big Number? (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a book that those of us who feast on numbers will absolutely adore, but will also tease the palates of those for whom numbers have previously been somewhat distasteful.  This book helps us not only to realize the relative magnitudes of many of the numbers which surround us, but also helps us understand precisely how and why our understanding of the universe often comes down to the numbers which describe it.  It’s just a shame that Pythagoras, who was reputed to say that “All is number,” isn’t around to appreciate it. By the way, the Elliot maintains a great website called “Is That a Big Number.” Well worth visiting!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of us have heard of the math-music connection, but Eli Maor’s Music by the Numbers: From Pythagoras to Schoenberg (Princeton University Press, 2018) is THE book that explains what that connection is, and how both math and music connect to both physics and biology.  There are wonderful anecdotes detailing the lives and creations of many of the great musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers who have contributed to creating music and our understanding of it.  If you love music – and who doesn’t – you’ll enjoy reading this book, even if you don’t love math.  And maybe, even if you don’t love math, you’ll have a greater appreciation of it after you finish the book.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Vicky Neale about her new book Closing the Gap: The Quest to Understand Prime Numbers (Oxford University Press, 2017). The book details one of the most exciting developments to happen in the last few years in mathematics, a new approach to the Twin Primes Conjecture. The story involves mathematicians from five different centuries and probably every continent except Antarctica. Vicky does a great job of telling not only what the problem is and how work on it has proceeded, but also how mathematical research has evolved given the resources available in the twenty first century. If you like numbers, you’ll love this book—and if you don’t like numbers, maybe this book can help you appreciate them.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The book discussed here is the The Joy of Mathematics (Prometheus Books, 2017), whose lead author, Alfred Posamentier, is our guest today. The subtitle Marvels, Novelties, and Neglected Gems That Are Rarely Taught in Math Classdescribes the book nicely. Much of the book can be read by someone with only a couple of years of high school math, and the book does a terrific job of showing the reader why those of us who love math do so. We like arithmetic, algebra, geometry, infinity, and the counterintuitively surprising, and the book contains lovely examples of all of these. Enjoy!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big Data: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives (Icon Books, 2017), by Brian Clegg, is a relatively short book about a subject that has emerged only recently, but is rapidly becoming a significant force in the evolution of society. Most of us have heard the term “big data,” but many of us erroneously assume that its just a lot of little data. It’s considerably more than that, and Big Data, which is an easy and fun read, serves as a terrific introduction to a topic which has an ever-increasing impact on many aspects of our lives.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Clegg is one of England’s most prolific and popular writers on science. His latest work, The Reality Frame: Relativity and Our Place in the Universe (Icon Books, 2017), covers Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and a whole lot more. Simply as an exposition of Einstein’s theories, the book is excellent its beautifully organized and delivered, with Clegg’s usual clarity and insight. But what makes the book transcend the usual work on this subject is that Clegg looks at relativity as a concept that can help us understand what distinguishes humanity as a species, and where our species fits into the Universe. Einstein himself would have enjoyed participating in a discussion of this fascinating topic, and may well have shared some of Clegg’s points of view.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The book discussed here is entitled The Calculus of Happiness: How a Mathematical Approach to Life Adds Up to Health, Wealth, and Love (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Oscar Fernandez. If the thought of calculus makes you nervous, don’t worry, you won’t need calculus to enjoy and appreciate this book. Its actually an intriguing way to introduce some of the precalculus topics that will later be needed in a calculus class, through the examination of some of the basic mathematical ideas that can be used to analyze the problems of how to attain relationship bliss, live long, and prosper and all without being a Vulcan.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of mind, the best current theory of cognition holds that thinking is in some sense computation “in some sense,” because that core idea can and has been elaborated in a number of different ways that are or at least seem to be incompatible in at least some respects. In Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models (MIT Press, 2014), David Danks proposes a version of this basic theory that links the mind closely with the computational framework used in machine learning: the idea that thinking involves manipulation of symbols encoded as graphical models. Danks, who is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that graphical models provide a unifying explanation of why we are able to move smoothly between different cognitive processes and why we are able to focus on features of situations that are relevant to our goals. While the book includes the mathematics behind graphical models, Dan

If ever there were a course that needs a book like Raffi Grinberg’s The Real Analysis Lifesaver: All the Tools You Need to Understand Proofs (Princeton University Press, 20170, analysis is unquestionably it, and I only wish that Raffi had gotten into the wayback machine and delivered me a copy when I was taking this course more than half a century ago. I got a C+, and almost certainly would have done a lot better if I’d had this book, and so will present and future students who struggle with this course.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices