Mathematician's delight
by W. W. Sawyer · first published 1943
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
A friendly, accessible introduction to the ideas behind mathematics, written for readers who have not studied much math. It offers a clear, visual, intuitive approach, suited to returning to the subject.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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A snapshot of my bookshelf's "math" section, which really hasn't changed much since I was in high school and hadn't taken calculus: W.W. Sawyer, What is Calculus About? and Mathematician's Delight Courant and Robbins, What is Mathematics? Hogben, Mathematics for the Million Steinhaus, Mathematical Snapshots Ivars Peterson, The Mathematical Tourist Davis and Hersh, The Mathematical Experience…
on “Ask HN: Good books on mathematics for somebody who's only taken high school math?” ↗…talking about teaching community college mathematics. That's not introductory university mathematics; if you are lucky it's Pythagoras' Theorem and quadratic equations. W. W. Sawyer's books, such as Mathematician's Delight[1] and Vision in Elementary Mathematics[2], seem to be exactly for this audience. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486462404/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/048642555X/
on “OpenStax – openly licensed textbooks” ↗Some years ago I took the same approach to start again from ground zero. I found Polya to be good, but a Mathematician's Delight is better and more accessible: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0486462404?ie=UTF8&ta...
on “Ask HN: Best Mathematics book for complete noobie?” ↗…already recommended my favorite for background reading, Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart. http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian-Stewar... Get that right away. Sawyer's A Mathematician's Delight is surely also good (I've read other books by Sawyer). http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0486462404/ Read those for background as you get my favorite overviews of mathematics: Basic Mathematics by…
on “Ask HN: Best Mathematics book for complete noobie?” ↗…Queen and Servant of Science - https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Queen-Servant-Science-Tem... - Mathematics and the Physical World - https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Physical-World-Dover-Book... - Mathematician's Delight - https://www.amazon.com/Mathematicians-Delight-Dover-Books-Ma...
on “Ask HN: Are there books for mathematics like Feynman's lectures on physics?” ↗Mathematician's Delight by W. W. Sawyer seems a good book.
on “The Essence of Mathematics Through Elementary Problems” ↗…board with this idea -- though in fairness it's a response to an implementation of a very specific programming environment, it's not a general solution. Re mentally visualising, I'm reading a book called Mathematician's Delight[1] at the minute, and its first chapter has one of the neatest pieces of writing on abstract reasoning that I think I've ever read, it's reified a lot of instinctual ideas I had about how I program. I've…
on “Learnable Programming (2012)” ↗