5 ms·

The book this blog post is based on -- Sanjoy Mahajan's "Street-fighting Mathematics" -- is a fantastic read. It is a bit like watching cirque du soleil; I don'

• hgsgm 4y ago
  That wonderful book is basically upper college level dimensional analysis. It unfortunately skips the basic level that you learn a little about in high school. This makes sense because the book was originally a PhD thesis about solving research level problems with dimensional analysis, so the easy problems were already solved, but makes it a bit of steep start for the casual reader who doesn't already understand the basic idea.
  • sriram_malhar 4y ago
    I understand the basic idea of dimensional analysis well enough in the context of college level physics. But that is only one part of the book; it is a catalog of impressive tricks (approximation, analogy, visual proofs) that Mahajan has accumulated over a long duration. The review on ams.org (by a structural engineer, not a mathematician) mirrors my difficulty (and fascination) with the book. https://www.ams.org/notices/201107/rtx110700960p.pdf https://www.ams.org/notices/201107/rtx110700960p.pdf