The Mathematical Tourist

What Hacker News says

1. tomgpFeb 2022
   The Mathematical Tourist by Ivars Peterson when i was 15. Years later when my wife and I combined our pretty extensive book collections it was the only tile we had in common.
   thread
2. tobinfrickeJul 2020
   I enjoyed "The Mathematical Tourist" by Ivars Peterson although it might be more "descriptive" than you are looking for. I found it quite inspiring, probably early in high school (forget when exactly I got it - maybe even earlier).
   thread
3. e12eDec 2014
   Aw, when I was an exchange student in Japan, all I had was my Casio graphing calculator (ironically bought in Norway, as it was one of a few required/approved for use on exams). The limited programming language was rather awful, but I still managed to implement plotting a zirpensky gasket, and a mandelbrot set (in black and white. The mandelbrot took roughly three hours to render, as I recall. I'd just start it, and leave it in my bag, and check it after a few periods... it was a little bit like self-mutilation -- but also a great feeling when you manage to make something like you intended, despite the limitations of the system... I had bought a copy of "The Mathematical Tourist: Snapshots of Modern Mathematics" by Peterson. A great and fun update on math, with pretty pictures. And enough detail that I could implement eg. the mandelbrot generator :-)

   I'm not too sad to see old calculators go -- I'm just hoping we'll get something like python notebooks on smart phones used in the classroom. Might have some problems with the networking... maybe there's a marked for an android pad that doesn't have any wireless hw?

   In Norway those Casio calculators were also approved for use at the college level -- but they were stupidly banned, because you could flash the rom, and store all sorts of useful things on them. Really stupid IMNHO, because if you can solve the (college level/sen. high school level) exam with the help of some utility or other -- or just a large book -- the exam is probably structured very poorly.

   There was an initiative to move to "open book exams" -- where you were allowed to basically bring any books/notes you wanted. I think it was great -- the questions were a little harder -- and you still had to know the subject matter or you'd run out of time before completing -- but I think it encouraged better tests than when you could essentially administer a glorified spelling test for any subject.

   Show morethread
4. mechanical_fishSep 2008
   A snapshot of my bookshelf's "math" section, which really hasn't changed much since I was in high school and hadn't taken calculus:

   W.W. Sawyer, What is Calculus About? and Mathematician's Delight

   Courant and Robbins, What is Mathematics?

   Hogben, Mathematics for the Million

   Steinhaus, Mathematical Snapshots

   Ivars Peterson, The Mathematical Tourist

   Davis and Hersh, The Mathematical Experience

   Polya, How to Solve It

   Huff, How to Lie With Statistics

   McGervey, Probabilities in Everyday Life

   Raymond Smullyan: The Lady or the Tiger, Alice in Puzzle-Land, others

   Anything by Martin Gardner. I happen to have picked up Mathematical Magic Show and Mathematical Circus, but I'm sure there are many other collections.

   I also recommend cryptography stuff. David Kahn's The Codebreakers is not really a math book, but it is awesome and it stars mathematicians, as does Simon Singh's The Code Book. You could read Schneier's Applied Cryptography.

   This is HN, so I would be remiss if I didn't point out that you can learn a lot of fun and useful math by reading SICP, Knuth, or any good algorithms book.

   If anybody out there knows a good, spirited statistics book addressed to someone who knows calculus, tell me. I keep planning to go through Fundamentals of Applied Probability Theory but I never get around to it; see "Related Resources" here:

   http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

   Having said all of that: I have a Ph.D. in physics/EE, so I've got to tell you, if you haven't tried calculus you haven't lived. ;) I'm not sure how to go about learning calculus in a fun way for a mathematician -- I took fairly standard first- and second-year college courses in calculus and physics and learned it that way. The folks on Amazon seem kind of enthusiastic about Spivak:

   http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/...

   Show morethread
5. e12eMar 2015
   I recall writing a mandelbrot program on my Casio (in the awful Casio basic) in the late 90s, after reading Ivar Peterson's "The Mathematical Tourist" (actually started with Sierpinski Gasket variations, as that is much easier, not to mention faster). I was wondering how he managed to do it in 12 minutes on such an old machine -- until I realized he only checked 24 iterations. I believe I started at a 100... and it took ~6 hours to run (more than the time from lunch until I got home, anyway...).
   Show morethread