The best writing on mathematics 2016 /
Mircea Pitici, editor.
- 1 online resource (377 pages)
Includes bibliographical references.
Introduction / Mircea Pitici -- Mathematics and teaching / Hyman Bass -- In defense of pure mathematics / Daniel S. Silver -- G.H. Hardy : mathematical biologist / Hannah Elizabeth Christenson & Stephan Ramon Garcia -- The reasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics / Derek Abbott -- Stacking wine bottles revisited / Burkard Polster -- The way the billiard ball bounces / Joshua Bowman -- The intersection game / Burkard Polster -- Tonight! Epic math battles : counting vs. matching / Jennifer J. Quinn -- Mathematicians chase moonshine's shadow / Erica Klarreich -- The impenetrable proof / Davide Castelvecchi -- A proof that some spaces can't be cut / Kevin Hartnett -- Einstein's first proof / Steven Strogatz -- Why string theory still offers hope we can unify physics / Brian Greene -- The pioneering role of the Sierpinski gasket / Tanya Khovanova, Eric Nie, & Alok Puranik -- Fractals as photographs / Marc Frantz -- Math at the Met / Joseph Dauben & Marjorie Senechal -- Common sense about the common core / Alan H. Schoenfeld -- Explaining your math : unnecessary at best, encumbering at worst / Katharine Beals & Barry Garelick -- Teaching applied mathematics / David Acheson, Peter R. Turner, Gilbert Strang, & Rachel Levy -- Circular reasoning : who first proved that C divided by d Is a constant? / David Richeson -- A medieval mystery : Nicole Oresme's concept of curvitas / Isabel M. Serrano & Bogdan D. Suceava -- The myth of Leibniz's proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus / Viktor Blasjo -- The Spirograph and mathematical models from nineteenth-century Germany / Amy Shell-Gellasch -- What does "depth" mean in mathematics? / John Stillwell -- Finding errors in big data / Marco Puts, Piet Daas, & Ton de Waal -- Programs and probability / Brian Hayes -- Lottery perception / Jorge Almeida -- Why acknowledging uncertainty can make you a better scientist / Andrew Gelman -- For want of a nail : why unnecessarily long tests may be impeding the progress of western civilization / Howard Wainer & Richard Feinberg -- How to write a general interest mathematics book / Ian Stewart.
An anthology of the year's finest writing on mathematics from around the world, featuring promising new voices as well as some of the foremost names in mathematics.