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Great Math Books as Recommended by Our Readers
- psykotic 16y agoWhat a conspicuous absence of Russian books! To mention only a tiny handful: - Mathematics: Its Contents, Methods and Meaning by Kolmogorov, Alexandrov, et al - Shafarevich's Basic Notions of Algebra - Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics Another favorite (though German, not Russian) is Brieskorn and Knörrer's Plane Algebraic Curves.
- acangiano 16y agoThank you for your feedback, psykotic. In our defense, the submission form was open to everyone. We simply published the entries we received. We may do a follow up post that incorporates other suggestions, if we receive enough of them.
- sb 16y ago"Mathematics: Its Contents, Methods and Meaning", seconded! I bought it a couple of years ago when I first read about it on HN and have to say that it is a highly readable account of mathematics.
- krambs 16y agoTo this day I still pull out Apostol's Calculus textbooks. If you're looking to learn calculus really well, or just brush up, these are the ones. http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction-Algebra/dp/0471000051 http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction...
- kenjackson 16y agoIMO the theorems in Apostol are tricky reading for most first learning Calculus.. Although probably for the HN crowd are appropriate. But I can't argue with the content or preparation it provides. I personally prefer Stewart as I think it is appropriate for a wider range of ability, while still being excellent.
- krambs 16y agoHa, yeah. Apostol definitely was a bit painful at first. But it felt like deriving calculus helped me learn better and remember it longer than more rote methods.
- Darmani 16y agoApostol is quite dry and unmotivated. A grad student friend of mine recently wrote a textbook to replace it, and has been testing it on the freshman honors calculus course here.
- gaurav_v 16y agoI would strongly suggest Jerry Shurman's Calculus and Multivariable Calculus texts, which are available for free on his website: people.reed.edu/~jerry/
- shadowpwner 16y agoThis is pretty cool. Are there answers for the exercises?
- gaurav_v 16y ago
- ot 16y agoI appreciate the effort to put together the list but the site looks very spammy to me. All the book links are affiliate links to Amazon. There are two adsense blocks one of which is right under the title (and is quite annoying). Most comments about the books don't explain why the book is good, and don't give much more information than what I can find in Amazon reviews. EDIT: I wrote "site" but I actually meant "post", sorry about the confusion.
- timwiseman 16y agoYes, this particular post could seem spammy, but I have been reading this blog for quite a while and generally find the content to be relevant and interesting. Even with this particular post, I personally have no problem with affiliate links and this list is an interesting compilation which the readers of the blog helped to create.
- grn 16y agoMy favourites would be: - anything written by Serre, - Shafarevich's Basic Algebraic Geometry, - Silverman's The Artihmetic of Elliptic Curves, - Milne's notes (available at http://jmilne.org http://jmilne.org).
- gaurav_v 16y agoMilne's notes are an awesome resource.
- Maro 16y agoThe Princeton Companion to Mathematics http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timothy-Gowers/dp/0691118809 http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timoth...
- acangiano 16y agoYes, it's #26 on the list.
- tygorius 16y agoThis highlights one of the weaknesses of the list -- the apparent lack of an editor. Whereas shou4577's comments explains the book's strengths and target audience, the original submission's description was so concise as to be near useless ("Coherent overview of all of pure mathematics.") This isn't intended as a slam of the original suggester, but to point out that the blog listing is only a starting point and in some regards less useful than the topic book lists some Amazon reviewers compile.
- shou4577 16y agoI own this book, and I use it occasionally, but it really requires the right audience. Firstly, it has several parts. Some of these are historical, philosophical, or otherwise interesting to a general audience, but some of them are technical (I would put most of pages 157-729, nearly 60% of the book, in this category). For people that are interested in mathematics, but do not have a fairly extensive background (I would estimate 2-3 courses beyond the calculus series), these technical sections are probably not very useful (and certainly not entertaining). For people (like me), who are still pursuing an education in mathematics, I would say this book is indispensable. It gives a great overview of individual branches of mathematics, including fairly rigorous explanations of important results and conjectures. The exposition portions of the book are good, but don't warrant the high price of the book on their own. Overall, though, it is a tremendous reference. Edit: I forgot to mention that the folks who write the articles are all outstanding mathematicians - many of them Fields medalists or other award winners. That makes for some very good reading.
- tjr 16y agohttp://www.math.sjsu.edu/~swann/mcsqrd.html http://www.math.sjsu.edu/~swann/mcsqrd.html
- stringbot 16y agoI would have preferred a list with more editorial input than "listed in the order received." As a math novice, I'd be much more interested to learn what Salman Khan's favorite math book is than Joe First-Post's.
- moultano 16y agoMy current favorite, Information Theory Inference and Learning Algorithms, available online for free. :) http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/
- jblow 16y agoSadly the list is missing my favorite math book, "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Sheldon Axler. It's an absolute must if you are learning linear algebra and want a deep understanding of it. Rather than make you grind through mechanical operations on matrices, as most books do, this book takes a coordinate-free algebraic approach and does an amazing number of things with it, cutting directly to the chief insights. There are ninja proofs in this book, 4 lines long, showing some deep and useful thing about linear algebra that other books would spend pages proving in a very verbose and uninsightful way.
- acangiano 16y agoLADR is in fact in the hall of fame: http://math-blog.com/mathematics-books/ http://math-blog.com/mathematics-books/
- contol-m 16y agoCan someone suggest a good book for learning Discrete Math? I have Rosen's book, but I did not like it much.
- pmiller2 16y agoConcrete Mathematics by Don Knuth. If you want specifically graph theory, I'd suggest Introduction to Graph Theory by Doug West.
- contol-m 16y agoI found Concrete Mathematics to be a bit dense and not very suited for self learners like me. Also it does not cover the basics like proofs, counting etc.
- euccastro 16y agoI've read good reviews of Susana Epp's Discrete Mathematics With Applications, and I liked what I read in a preview. It's expensive, though, so I'm waiting for the international edition (about 1/3 the cost), which is due out next month.
- seanstickle 16y agoI found "A Logical Approach to Discrete Math" by Gries and Schneider to be delightful. It teaches discrete math using formal logic as the basis of the whole system. http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Approach-Discrete-Monographs-Computer/dp/0387941150 http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Approach-Discrete-Monographs-C...
- karlzt 16y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1935049 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1935049
- niels_olson 16y agoHere's a poll the rank the submissions http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2204319 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2204319
- solipsist 16y agoAny parent trying to get their children interested in math should definitely check out Murderous Maths: http://www.murderousmaths.co.uk/ http://www.murderousmaths.co.uk/
- forkandwait 16y agoGilbert Strang, Linear Algebra and Its Application, THIRD EDITION. Very undergrad, somewhere in between first and second semester level, and oriented to matrices (opposite of Axler), but very readable and useful.
- A_A 16y agoI'm surprised there aren't any listings for Marcus du Sautoy. "The Num8er My5teries", "The Music of the Primes" - are delightful. Also, "Fermat's Enigma" by Simon Singh is riveting. My other recent favorite: "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel" by Rebecca Goldstein. A highly readable biography of Gödel