Littlewood's Miscellany
by John E. Littlewood · first published 1953
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"Littlewood's Miscellany, which includes most of the earlier work as well as much of the material Professor Littlewood collected after the publication of A Mathematician's Miscellany, allows us to see academic life in Cambridge, especially in Trinity College, through the eyes of one of its greatest figures. The joy that Professor Littlewood found in life and mathematics is reflected in the many amusing anecdotes about his contemporaries, written in his pungent, aphoristic style. The general reader should, in most instances, have no trouble following the mathematical passages"--Publisher's desc
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…Euclid's proof of the infinitude of the primes) his feelings about the "importance" of math, its "usefulness", and the distinction between pure and applied math. It's interesting to compare "Apology" to "Littlewood's Miscellany" (I recommend the Cambridge University Press version, which contains the essay "The Mathematician's Art of Work" - ISBN 0-521-33702-X). There is more math than in "Apology" and many anecdotes. J. E. Littlewood…
on ““A Course of Pure Mathematics” – G. H. Hardy (1921) [pdf]” ↗…of minor idea; I used to postpone it, when possible, till after a period of work." [2] [1] Jacques Hadamard, "The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field" (p. 12--13) [2] J. E. Littlewood, "Littlewood's Miscellany" (p. 192) [A wonderful book, by the way!]
on “Calculus Made Easy” ↗…in math who also say four is the limit; a quick google found this for example https://theweek.com/articles/696644/why-should-work-4-hours-.... FWIW. Also well-konwn are the first two paragraphs of Littlewood's Miscellany, https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1986-littlewood-littlewoodsm..., p 189.
on “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” ↗I first read about the ~4 hour limit from D.E. Littlewood's book, Littlewood's Miscellany. He recommends "four hours a day or at most five, with breaks about every hour (for walks perhaps)." Since then I've read of luminaries mentioning this in passing, but I haven't really tried to employ…
on “Four Hours of Concentration” ↗…counter-example for some long-standing conjecture? I realize it's vague (to put it mildly), but it was 20-something years since it came up in the math class in the Uni. Edit - Haha, found it! It was in Littlewood's Miscellany - Picard's Theorem [1]. [1] https://books.google.ch/books?id=MjVgeT7Laf8C&pg=PA40&lpg=PA...
on “The shortest paper ever published in a serious math journal explained” ↗…as small as possible", and that bit was absent but there was in its place a very very tiny sigma. Unless he's outright lying, I think this one actually happened! [1] The more recent edition is titled "Littlewood's Miscellany"; I am fairly sure this story is in both the older and the newer version.
on “Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful” ↗