| ▲ | Six Math Essentials(terrytao.wordpress.com) |
| 148 points by digital55 9 hours ago | 20 comments |
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| ▲ | nhatcher 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I'm sure it's a great book :). I find good popular books on higher mathematics difficult to come by. A nice exception is the trilogy written by Avner Ash and Robert Groß: Elliptic Tales, Fearless Symmetry and Summing it up (in my order of preference) |
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| ▲ | cjauvin 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sorry for the stupid question but is Elliptic Tales your favorite or is it Summing it up? |
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| ▲ | digital55 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Terence Tao: Just a brief announcement that I have been working with Quanta Books to publish a short book in popular mathematics entitled “Six Math Essentials“, which will cover six of the fundamental concepts in mathematics. |
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| ▲ | alok-g 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | From the brief description, this sounds to be quite basic. Looking forward to hearing if Terence has treated the explanations differently. :-) | | |
| ▲ | ngcc_hk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Basic … that kind of word give me nightmare in my mind when you talked about maths … still remember a book called “elementary set theory” … | | | |
| ▲ | hirvi74 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > this sounds to be quite basic. It should be according to Tao's own comment at the bottom of the blog: "This book is for a general audience, without necessarily having a college-level math education. It is aimed more at adults than at children, but some children with an interest in mathematics may be able to get something of it." | | |
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| ▲ | jawns 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I greatly admire Tao's work. But for a book intended for a popular audience, it sure does have a bore-you-to-death cover. |
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| ▲ | rramadass 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Seems similar to John Stillwell's classic Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171685/el... It has one chapter each for Arithmetic, Computation, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, Combinatorics, Probability, Logic. He positioned it as a sort of a modern update to Felix Klein's Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint series of books. From the preface; This book grew from an article I wrote in 2008 for the centenary of Felix Klein’s Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint. The article reflected on Klein’s view of elementary mathematics, which I found to be surprisingly modern, and made some comments on how his view might change in the light of today’s mathematics. With further reflection I realized that a discussion of elementary mathematics today should include not only some topics that are elementary from the twenty-first-century viewpoint, but also a more precise explanation of the term “elementary” than was possible in Klein’s day. So, the first goal of the book is to give a bird’s eye view of elementary mathematics and its treasures. This view will sometimes be “from an advanced standpoint,” but nevertheless as elementary as possible. Readers with a good high school training in mathematics should be able to understand most of the book, though no doubt everyone will experience some difficulties, due to the wide range of topics... The second goal of the book is to explain what “elementary” means, or at least to explain why certain pieces of mathematics seem to be “more elementary” than others. It might be thought that the concept of “elementary” changes continually as mathematics advances. Indeed, some topics now considered part of elementary mathematics are there because some great advance made them elementary... Note: "Elementary" here does not mean Easy. |
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| ▲ | ColinWright 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I find Stillwell's writings to be exceptionally clear and accessible, and I recommend them. It will be interesting to see if Tao's writings are as clear, though possibly he is targetting a different audience. | | |
| ▲ | rramadass 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | From Book Details; a brief tour of six core ideas—numbers, algebra, geometry, probability, analysis, and dynamics—that capture the beauty and power of mathematical thinking for everyone. In Six Math Essentials, the renowned mathematician and Fields Medalist Terence Tao introduces readers to six central concepts that have guided mathematicians from antiquity to the frontiers of what we know today and now help us make sense of our complex world. This slim, elegant volume explores numbers as the gateway to quantitative thinking; algebra as the gateway to abstraction; geometry as a way to calculate beyond what we can see; probability as a tool to navigate uncertainty with rigorous thinking; analysis as a means to tame the very large or the very small; and dynamics as the mathematics of change. Six Math Essentials—Tao’s first popular math book Terence Tao's comment :- This book is for a general audience, without necessarily having a college-level math education. It is aimed more at adults than at children, but some children with an interest in mathematics may be able to get something out of it. It is just 160 pages so must be information dense with no fluff. I am sold ! PS: Another book in the same (but easier) vein would be Ian Stewart's classic Concepts of Modern Mathematics - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486284248 |
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| ▲ | jackhalford 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Which ebook provider should I use to get an actual epub file? |
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| ▲ | reader9274 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is this Terry's 17th book? |
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| ▲ | hirvi74 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How exciting! I am atrocious at mathematics and held much contempt for the field until I was in college and 'saw the light,' if you will. Since college, I have absolutely fallen in love with mathematics. I learned it was not mathematics I always hated, but the U.S. public education system's method of teaching mathematics. While I am still quite weak in the matter, I do believe that I will be preordering a copy of this book. Thank you for sharing this. |
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| ▲ | erxam 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Genuinely, what is it that you get from studying mathematics? I get that it's a hobby, but what do you even do with the knowledge you acquire? I don't exactly fear math (even though I'm complete shit at it) but the time investment required is absolutely massive for something with questionable utility, even just for playing around with. You need a super strong base to even attempt bashing basic problems, so that's easily four or five years of study just to play around a bit. | |
| ▲ | rramadass 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You might find the couple of books that i mention in my other comments here useful; Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486284248 Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel by John Stillwell - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171685/el... Both of them give a nice tour of various domains within modern mathematics and their inter-relationships which is what i believe is most important to understand for a general reader. | | |
| ▲ | hirvi74 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Could a clever idiot understand such books? If so, I might be willing to check them out. Thank you for the recommendations either way. | | |
| ▲ | rramadass 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Absolutely! Any person willing to study and think can understand the above books. As i mentioned, they cover a broad swath of mathematics and are meant for the general reader. You can checkout reviews on Amazon and elsewhere on the web. Mathematics can be approached in two ways; 1) For understanding 2) For techniques of usage. The above books help with (1). Textbooks focus on (2). A very good succinct (< 150 pages!) introductory text for (2) is George Simmons' Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry. It is available at https://github.com/enilsen16/The-Math-Group One word of advice; most people's phobia of mathematics arises from not knowing/understanding the notation. It is just a shorthand language which you need to get familiar with. When you come across a formula, just expand and read it out aloud in your own version of easy English. You will understand better and lose your fear of mathematics. A book like Mathematical Notation: A Guide for Engineers and Scientists by Edward Scheinerman is of great help here. There are of course lots of free resources for this on the web starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... |
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