Name: Things to make and do in the fourth dimension
ISBN: 9780374535636

Things to make and do in the fourth dimension

A mathematician and comedian offers games, puzzles, and hands-on activities to help those with a fear of math understand and enjoy the logical tools and abstract concepts of the subject normally only accessible at college-level study. "Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do--through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity--and slightly beyond.

What Hacker News says

PhithagorasFeb 2022

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker is a fun, accessible, and fascinating explanation of how math can be a big game.

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold really is great. It comes up a lot on this website but it was a great follow up, a good bridge from the fun almost hack-y math to a more "serious" approach. This led me to:

Computability and Logic by George S Boolos. A standard textbook in universities across North America (and maybe further?).

In the end I didn't become a mathematician. I hardly use advanced math compared to many other engineers and scientists but the ideas have stuck with me for years, and I think my life is richer for knowing them

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Jun8Nov 2021

Here's a much better party/bar trick:

  1. Point to the drink glass in front of you
  2. Ask friend if they think the circumference or height of the glass is larger
  3. Friend will invariably think that height is larger
  4. Wager for a drink that that's not the case
  5. Use a straw to measure the circumference and then height
  6. Enjoy your free drink

Unless you've picked an a Champaigne flute you'll always win. To make it even more fun, for (4) wager that the circumference will be two times the height to make it sound more incredulous. For typical glasses you may go up to three!

I learned this trick from Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension (https://www.amazon.com/Things-Make-Fourth-Dimension-Mathemat...), overall good book.

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njkleinerJul 2020

This might be a bit of a different take than the other comments here, but I highly enjoyed reading Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker when I first became interested in maths.

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TallGuyShortDec 2019

"Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension" is really fun, but it's not really tech, it's more just math. But I do a lot of work with scientific / numerical computing so some may group them together. In addition to math, it covers some interesting algorithms and fun ways to use spreadsheets for images, etc.

I also really enjoy books about the tech used in the early space program. "Digital Apollo" is probably the one that makes the best light / easy reading.

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raintreesFeb 2019

Likely listed elsewhere, from the article for convenience:

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife

Measurement - Paul Lockhart

Prelude to Mathematics - W. W. Sawyer

Proofs from The Book - Aigner and Ziegler

The Joy of x - Steven Strogatz

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension - Matt Parker

What is Mathematics? - Courant and Robbins

A History of PI - Petr Beckmann

An Imaginary Tale - Paul Nahin

e: The Story of a Number - Eli Maor

Imagining Numbers - Barry Mazur

Journey Through Genius - William Dunham

Prime Obsession - John Derbyshire

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TallGuyShortSep 2018

I actually just read a bit about him in Matt Parker's "Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension", which I highly recommend. I've always enjoyed math and long regretted not taking more math classes for fun at university, and this is a really fun tour to lots of aspects of math I haven't had occasion to think about much before, including some of Srinivasa's talents for number theory.

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