About the Book
How to Free Your Inner Mathematician: Notes on Mathematics and Life offers readers guidance in managing the fear, freedom, frustration, and joy that often accompany calls to think mathematically. With practical insight and years of award-winning mathematics teaching experience, D'Agostino offers more than 300 hand-drawn sketches alongside accessible descriptions of fractals, symmetry, fuzzy logic, knot theory, Penrose patterns, infinity, the Twin Prime Conjecture, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Fermat's Last Theorem, and other intriguing mathematical topics.
Readers are encouraged to embrace change, proceed at their own pace, mix up their routines, resist comparison, have faith, fail more often, look for beauty, exercise their imaginations, and define success for themselves.
Mathematics students and enthusiasts will learn advice for fostering courage on their journey regardless of age or mathematical background. How to Free Your Inner Mathematician delivers not only engaging mathematical content but provides reassurance that mathematical success has more to do with curiosity and drive than innate aptitude.
Table of Contents:
1: Mix up your routine, as cicadas with prime number cycles
2: Grow in accessible directions, like Voronoi diagrams
3: Rely on your reasoning abilities, because folded paper may reach the moon
4: Define success for yourself, given Arrow's Impossibility Theorem
5: Reach for the stars, just like Katherine Johnson
6: Find the right match, as with binary numbers and computers
7: Act natural, because of Benford's Law
8: Resist comparison, because of chaos theory
9: Look all around, as Archimedes did in life
10: Walk through the problem, as on the Konigsborg bridges
11: Untangle problems, with knot theory
12: Consider all options, as the shortest path between two points is not always straight
13: Look for beauty, because of Fibonacci numbers
14: Divide and conquer, just like Riemann sums in calculus
15: Embrace change, considering non-Euclidean geometry
16: Pursue an easier approach, considering the Pigeonhole Principle
17: Make an educated guess, like Kepler with his Sphere-packing Conjecture
18: Proceed at your own pace, because of terminal velocity
19: Pay attention to details, as Earth is an oblate spheroid
20: Join the community, with Hilbert's 23 problems
21: Search for like-minded math friends, because of the Twin Prime Conjecture
22: Abandon perfectionism, because of the Hairy Ball Theorem
23: Enjoy the pursuit, as Andrew Wiles did with Fermat's Last Theorem
24: Design your own pattern, because of the Penrose Patterns
25: Keep it simple whenever possible, since
26: Change your perspective, with Viviani's Theorem
27: Explore, on a Mobius strip
28: Be contradictory, because of the infinitude of primes
29: Cooperate when possible, because of game theory
30: Consider the less-travelled path, because of the Jordan Curve Theorem
31: Investigate, because of the golden rectangle
32: Be okay with small steps, as the harmonic series grows without bound
33: Work efficiently, like bacteriophages with icosahedral symmetry
34: Find the right balance, as in coding theory
35: Draw a picture, as in proofs without words
36: Incorporate nuance, because of fuzzy logic
37: Be grateful when solutions exist, because of Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem
38: Update your understanding, with Bayesian statistics
39: Keep an open mind, because imaginary numbers exist
40: Appreciate the process, by taking a random walk
41: Fail more often, just like Albert Einstein did with
42: Get disoriented, on a Klein bottle
43: Go outside your realm of experience, on a hypercube
44: Follow your curiosity, along a space-filling curve
45: Exercise your imagination, with fractional dimensions
46: Proceed with care, because some infinities are larger than others
About the Author :
Susan D'Agostino is a mathematician and writer whose essays have been published in Quanta Magazine, Scientific American, Financial Times, Nature, Undark, Times Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, Math Horizons, Mathematics Teacher, and others. She earned her PhD in Mathematics from Dartmouth College, Master of Arts in Teaching Mathematics from Smith College, and BA in Anthropology from Bard College. She is a Council for the Advancement of
Science Writing Taylor/Blakeslee Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Her website is www.susandagostino.com and her Twitter handle is @susan_dagostino.
Review :
This is a popular book for those who want to learn about mathematics and mathematical thinking but have no mathematical background...Detailed solutions to the problems are provided
In an era of excellent books about mathematics for a popular audience, this book stands out, for its spirit, imagination, and liveliness.
I never knew I could find math so entertaining! I loved not just bending my mind around concepts I can actually use in my life but learning about some of the mathematicians and history behind them. D'Agostino's clever illustrations are a big plus!
Marvelous mathematical meditations. D'Agostino leads the reader to discover their mathematical selves through self-contained explorations. Appropriate for mathematical novices, enthusiasts, professionals, or anyone willing to reflect on the truth, beauty, and joy of mathematics.
In life, as in mathematics, a fresh approach is sometimes warranted. D'Agostino intertwines life's lessons with those gleaned from a stunning array of mathematical gems to forge a vision of mathematics that is both personal and universal.
This delightful book contains precious nuggets of mathematics rendered accessible to most by connecting them to real life and engaging the reader in artfully paced steps. What is truly unique about this book, however, is the way D'Agostino infuses it with her humanity, making it as fun and instructive as it is wise.
Few things are as beautiful, fascinating and revealing about life and important to its pursuit as mathematics. This elegantly written book makes mathematics alive and accessible, without compromise, with charm, clarity, grace, and wit. This book should fall into the hands not only of all students, but all adults. Readers will not only be grateful, but will smile along the way.
This book is a great entry point for the curious student wondering about the world around them, a wonderful reference guide for the parent, a reminder for the working engineer, or an enjoyable read for anyone seeking to "update their understanding." It reminds us how elegantly math helps make sense of the world - and that success is in the eye of the beholder!
I could describe the essays in this collection as inspiring and motivational, but that wouldn't quite communicate the validation I felt reading them... [the book] draws upon the theorems, applications, and history of mathematics to inspire lessons and advice for us along our mathematical (and other) pursuits. Delightful illustrations and an (honestly) enjoyable exercise accompany each essay. This book will appeal to aspiring mathematicians at any career stage, but its most important audience may be the latent mathematicians who have been discouraged from the discipline but are open to a fresh invitation.
