Mathematics Can Be Fun

What Hacker News says

1. rramadassJul 2026
   Not the person you asked the question of;

   I thought everybody knew of this site especially Indians since it was started and is lovingly maintained by an Indian :-) A lot of hard work has gone into it with not just scanning of the books but also typesetting some of them in latex for better rendering and reading. The website author deserves all the credit/acclaim he can get.

   All of the books are hosted on internet archive which you can browse here - https://archive.org/details/mir-titles

   Many of the titles are also published in hard copy form by low-cost Indian publishers on Amazon India.

   Some recommendations which are not typical textbooks;

   1) Little Mathematics Library series - https://mirtitles.org/2024/05/11/little-mathematics-library-...

   2) Books by Lev Tarasov. Some of these books are structured as a dialogue and thus walks you through the conceptual process. Titles are on Calculus, Probability, Quantum Mechanics, Physics Q/A etc. All worth reading; some of them are latex remastered versions - https://mirtitles.org/?s=Tarasov

   3) Higher Math for Beginners(with Yaglom) and Elements of Applied Mathematics(with Myskis) by Zeldovich - https://mirtitles.org/?s=zeldovich

   4) Mathematical Handbook (two vols); Elementary Mathematics and Higher Mathematics by M.Vygodsky. - https://mirtitles.org/?s=vygodsky

   5) Handbook of Physics by Yavorsky and Detlaf - https://mirtitles.org/?s=Handbook+of+Physics

   6) Fundamentals of Physics by Ivanov - https://mirtitles.org/2018/04/21/fundamentals-of-physics-iva...

   7) Ever popular Science/Maths books by Yakov Perelman viz. Physics for Entertainment, Mathematics can be Fun etc. - https://mirtitles.org/?s=Yakov+Perelman

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2. hiyerJul 2026
   We used to get these books in the annual international book fair in Delhi back in my childhood days. I still have 2 of them (Mathematics Can Be Fun and How The Steel Was Tempered), but I'm pretty sure we had several more at the time. They were fun reads, and the illustrations used to be great!
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3. hliyanJul 2026
   We had these in Sri Lanka, some of it translated to the local language and published by local publishers. I can't remember whether it was specifically a Mir publication, but I have fond memories of Y. Perelman's Mathematics can be Fun -- beautifully printed and hardbound, with meticulously drawn line art illustrations covering various applications of mathematics.
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4. NooneAtAll3Jan 2026
   "Mathematics can be fun" is an awesome book

   A group of people decided to seat together and talk about some casual math problems

   The one problem I keep remembering is a bet about 1000 men walking by on the street in a row. Random chance is not guaranteed - especially when it's suddenly a parade :)

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5. zemJan 2026
   "mathematics can be fun" was one of my favourite books when I was a kid. I remember spending a lot of time on this particular puzzle, wrapping my head around the various rotational motions of something both rotating around its axis and orbiting something else. there was also the related puzzle of how many rotations a coin makes when rolling around another identical coin.
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6. rramadassDec 2025
   One of the best ways to learn to think Scientifically i.e. in terms of Physics/Chemistry/Mathematics/Biology is to start with the classic Soviet era books by Yakov Perelman - https://mirtitles.org/?s=yakov+perelman

   Specifically; start with the 2-vol Physics for Entertainment (the breadth of coverage is really good) followed by Mathematics can be Fun, Algebra can be Fun etc.

   Note: Do not be misled by the words "Entertainment"/"Fun" etc. in the title. As is typical of Soviet era books these are serious works with precise, succinct and focused topics quite unlike most current "pop science" books.

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