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One of the main themes of the book is the beauty that mathematics possess, which Hardy compares to painting and poetry. For Hardy, the most beautiful mathematics was that which had no applications in the outside world, by which he meant pure mathematics, and, in particular, his own special field of number theory. He justifies the pursuit of pure mathematics with the argument that its very "uselessness" meant that it could not be misused to cause harm....

Overview: The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn't confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do-the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our...

"In How to Bake Pi, math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of mathematics, powered, unexpectedly, by insights from the kitchen: we learn, for example, how the béchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number 5, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard."--Publisher description.

"Where does math come from? From a textbook? From rules? From deduction? From logic? Not really, Eugenia Cheng writes in Is Math Real?: it comes from curiosity, from instinctive human curiosity, "from people not being satisfied with answers and always wanting to understand more." And most importantly, she says, "it comes from questions": not from answering them, but from posing them. Nothing could seem more at odds from the way most of us were taught...

We commonly define the Pythagorean theorem using the formula a2 + b2 = c2. But Pythagoras himself would have been confused by that. Explore how this famous theorem can be explained using common geometric shapes (no fancy algebra required), and how it’s a critical foundation for the rest of geometry.

Nicholas M. Katz is professor of mathematics at Princeton University. He is the author or coauthor of six previous titles in the Annals of Mathematics Studies: Arithmetic Moduli of Elliptic Curves (with Barry Mazur); Gauss Sums, Kloosterman Sums, and Monodromy Groups; Exponential Sums and Differential Equations; Rigid Local Systems; Twisted L-Functions and Monodromy; and Moments, Monodromy, and Perversity. Convolution and Equidistribution explores...

The mathematics of ancient Egypt was fundamentally different from our math today. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't a primitive forerunner of modern mathematics. In fact, it can't be understood using our current computational methods. Count Like an Egyptian provides a fun, hands-on introduction to the intuitive and often-surprising art of ancient Egyptian math. David Reimer guides you step-by-step through addition, subtraction, multiplication,...

Originally published in 1908, this classic calculus text transformed university teaching and remains a must-read for all students of introductory mathematical analysis. Clear, rigorous explanations of the mathematics of analytical number theory and calculus cover single-variable calculus, sequences, number series, and properties of cos, sin, and log. Meticulous expositions detail the fundamental ideas underlying differential and integral calculus,...

Dennis S. Bernstein is professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan. When first published in 2005, Matrix Mathematics quickly became the essential reference book for users of matrices in all branches of engineering, science, and applied mathematics. In this fully updated and expanded edition, the author brings together the latest results on matrix theory to make this the most complete, current, and easy-to-use book on matrices. ...

"Winner of the 2006 Book Award in Computers/Internet, Independent Publisher Book Awards" David Alan Grier is Associate Professor in the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University. His articles on the history of science have appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, Chance, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Washington Post. He is Editor in Chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Long...