5 ms·
I remember these short 20-30 page math books written for 6th-8th grade students by prominent Soviet mathematicians. Extremely clear exposition. About 30 years l
by adiM 5y ago
I remember these short 20-30 page math books written for 6th-8th grade students by prominent Soviet mathematicians. Extremely clear exposition. About 30 years later, I still remember the contents of the book on logarithms, which gave geometric interpretation of log as the area under the curve of 1/x, and used that to show why log must satisfy properties such as log(ab) = log(a) + log(b). As a 12 year old, my mind was blown away and I read all such books that I could find, which lead to a lifelong passion for mathematics.
- bugzz 5y agoDo you happen to know what that logarithm book was?
- adiM 5y agoThanks to the comment by yantrams: https://mirtitles.org/2012/09/05/little-mathematics-library-areas-and-logarithms/ https://mirtitles.org/2012/09/05/little-mathematics-library-...
- sandGorgon 5y agoIrodov and Crotov ?
- yantrams 5y agoI highly doubt it. They are problem books and aren’t aimed at middle school kids. My guess would be the [1] Science for everyone pocket books. They fit the description but definitely have more than 20-30 pages. [1] https://mirtitles.org/tag/science-for-everyone/ https://mirtitles.org/tag/science-for-everyone/
- adiM 5y agoThanks!!!! I didn't remember the name of the series and this is it. Found my favorite logarithm book: https://mirtitles.org/2012/09/05/little-mathematics-library-areas-and-logarithms/ https://mirtitles.org/2012/09/05/little-mathematics-library-... And my memory was hazy. These are 70-80 pages rather than 20-30. They seemed like short books when I was reading them :-)
- yantrams 5y agoAh yes the little mathematics library :) I had a book or two from this series but never really got into them. Was more into Perelman's books on puzzles and riddles at that age. And speaking of pocket science books, my favorite is [1] 'Straight Lines and Curves'. Accessible to high schoolers with quirky illustrations and introduces many interesting concepts. [1] https://mirtitles.org/2013/10/21/straight-lines-and-curves-vasilyev-gutenmacher/ https://mirtitles.org/2013/10/21/straight-lines-and-curves-v...
- dmos62 5y agoWhat a difference it makes when you're thought by someone who's passionate about the subject.
- pdimitar 5y agoI remember those books and I'll always regret that I misplaced them. Do you happen to know a collector who's selling them?
- thwoieruwe234 5y ago+1 The books by Soviet authors always seemed so much less verbose than those from the West. I particularly appreciated this, as I had - and have - poor English ability (like many other Indians), but was nevertheless forced into an exclusively English based education (also like many other Indians). There are gems like Spivak from the other side, but I find it much rarer. Even papers are annoyingly verbose - almost as if to compensate for general lack of novelty. (forgive the rant).
- javajosh 5y agoFirst, I find it hard to believe that someone who can correctly construct a phrase like "almost as if to compensate for general lack of novelty" to have poor English. Or perhaps your definition of "poor" is different than my own. Second, why not just ignore the verbiage you didn't want or need? It's easier to remove exposition if you don't want it than to add it in if its missing!
- thwoieruwe234 5y agoif someone would mark all the "important" bits in red, I could. alas, they don't, and drone on and on and on with smattering of important bits thrown in. for instance, Thomas & Finney's book is what... 2000 pages ? In comparison, Piskunov was something like 200-300 pages IIRC. btw phrase usage is not "good" english - it's in fact an easy tactic to get around it. this is a very obvious in the outputs of Indian state/academia, esp. in the humanities - lots of fancy sounding words/phrases, but very often, zero actual knowledge. some of the judgments of the indian courts, will even make you weep... but i digress. personally, non-generic non-templated emails still take a lot of effort and constant second-guessing. (this took ~5-10m to write, and probably still has grammatical errors and semantics issues).
- javajosh 5y agoMy senior year quantum prof was a Landau student, and he was so terse and inscrutable - it was an awful class. Given the man's combination of thick Russian accent, lisp, and poor English, a bit of redundancy in his delivery would have helped! But I get your point.