The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics, from One to Infinity

Steven H. Strogatz,Steven Strogatz

ISBN 10: 1848878435 / ISBN 13: 9781848878433

Published by Atlantic, 1648

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Synopsis:

Maths is everywhere, often where we least expect it. Award-winning professor Steven Strogatz acts as our guide as he takes us on a tour of numbers that - unbeknownst to the most of us - form a fascinating and integral part of our everyday lives. In The Joy of X, Strogatz explains the great ideas of maths - from negative numbers to calculus, fat tails to infinity - and shows how they connect to everything from popular culture and philosophy to current affairs and business practice. He is the maths teacher you never had and this book is perfect for the smart and curious, the expert and the beginner.

Review:

Guest Review by Janna Levin

Janna Levin is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Barnard College of Columbia University. She has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of space time. She is the author of the popular-science book, How the Universe Got Its Spots and a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, which won the PEN/Bingham prize. Janna was recently named a Guggenheim Fellow (2012).

I loved this beautiful book from the first page.

Mathematicians are in a peculiar predicament. Mathematical beauty is patent to them. And in the perception of that beauty is pleasure, is joy. But that pleasure is not easily shared. Mathematical beauty eludes many others, or even most others.

Steven Strogatz wants to share that joy. He sees the beauty of pi and 0 and infinity. But he doesn’t want to impose his impressions on you or to report on the view from his privileged perspective. He wants you to see it too. He doesn’t want to argue that mathematics is creative and beautiful. He wants you to experience the visceral pleasure for yourself.

To that end, he disassembles mathematics as a discipline, both feared and revered, and reassembles mathematics as a world, both accessible and magical.

If you have never braved this grand world, put away your math anxiety, your preconceptions. This book is the most welcoming entree to mathematical thinking that I know of.

If you have braved this grand world, you will find a collection of gems, new ways of inhabiting the domain. Strogatz links historical anecdotes to new insights, as though the math itself is sculptural, composed of forms that are simultaneously familiar and ethereal. The logic seems effortless so that each module snaps into its complement with a gratifying click.

This book is a rebuttal to the accusation that mathematical abstraction is cold or inhuman. Mathematics is no more intrinsically cold or inhuman than language. And Strogatz lends a warmth and humanity to both.

The Joy of x is, well, a joy.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics, ...
Publisher: Atlantic
Publication Date: 1648
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good