Further Reading

We'll put up various readings related to in-class discussions, problems on the homework, and of course Friday Story Times.

Story Time 1, Friday, September 18th

The Story of Duke Mu, from "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" by J.D. Salinger

Story Time 2, Friday, September 25th

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens

Story Time 3, Friday, October 2nd

A Mathematician's Apology, by G. H. Hardy

Darboux's Theorem, a new proof by Lars Olsen of Problem 1.6.7 in Hubbard-Hubbard. It also includes a nice historical discussion and the proof suggested by our book's hint.

Story Time 4, Friday, October 16th

"Dabchick" by Haruki Murakami

The geometer and Fields medalist David Mumford has an interesting math blog and the current post contains an interesting classification of mathematicians with nice examples.

In class, we discussed the failings of H-H's proof of uniqueness of row echelon form. Here is a nicer proof, using induction, courtesy of Theo's web surfing.

Story Time 5, Friday, October 23rd

A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart

Story Time 6, Friday, October 30th

Eunoia, by Christian Bok, a poem with severe restrictions

Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun, by Heather McHugh, where the rhyming scheme uses "erd person."

Story Time 7, Friday, November 6th

The Importance of Recreational Math, an opinion piece in the New York Times from a few weeks ago, raises interesting questions about how to enjoy mathematics and how to communicate the work of mathematics to a wide audience.

A stronger inverse function theorem, as told on Terry Tao's math blog. We ask for the function to be everywhere differentiable, not continuously differentiable.

Story Time 8, Friday, November 20th

How to Prove It, a book by Daniel Velleman on techniques for proof. The link is to the publisher's site for the page, but it is available in our math library at QA9.V38.

The Best Writing on Mathematics is a yearly compendium of articles on all topics. Again, the above link is to the publisher, but you can find books in the series at QA8.6.B476 in our math library. Also, we started a problem about Wizards on a bus. You can read more about the resolution of this problem at Tanya Khovanova's math blog. The blog contains lots more interesting recreational mathematics.

Story Time 9, Friday, December 4th

Here are a couple of nice reviews about the book "mathematics without apologies" by Michael Harris, which should give you the gist without having to read it all:
• NY Review of Books
• Harvard Magazine

This New York Times Book Review article has trouble with percentages.

Story Time 10, Friday, December 11th

Outside In, the Geometry Center video on eversion of the sphere.

Applications of Linear Algebra, a nice set of lecture notes by my collaborator Andy Schultz at Wellesley College. It discusses both the Google page rank and the compression of images.