The Best Writing on Mathematics 2019

Mircea Pitici

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780691198354
  9780691198675
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691197944
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Games in Mathematics
• Index: Mathematics

The year's finest mathematical writing from around the world

This annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world. Featuring promising new voices alongside some of the foremost names in the field, The Best Writing on Mathematics 2019 makes available to a wide audience many articles not easily found anywhere else—and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy them. These essays delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday aspects of math, offering surprising insights into its nature, meaning, and practice—and taking readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates.

In this volume, Moon Duchin explains how geometric-statistical methods can be used to combat gerrymandering, Jeremy Avigad illustrates the growing use of computation in making and verifying mathematical hypotheses, and Kokichi Sugihara describes how to construct geometrical objects with unusual visual properties. In other essays, Neil Sloane presents some recent additions to the vast database of integer sequences he has catalogued, and Alessandro Di Bucchianico and his colleagues highlight how mathematical methods have been successfully applied to big-data problems. And there's much, much more.

In addition to presenting the year's most memorable math writing, this must-have anthology includes an introduction by the editor and a bibliography of other notable writings on mathematics.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in where math has taken us—and where it is headed.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• Geometry v. Gerrymandering
• Slicing Sandwiches, States, and Solar Systems: Can Mathematical Tools Help Determine What Divisions Are Provably Fair?
• Does Mathematics Teach How to Think?
• Abstracting the Rubik’s Cube
• Topology-Disturbing Objects: A New Class of 3D Optical Illusion
• Mathematicians Explore Mirror Link between Two Geometric Worlds
• Professor Engel’s Marvelously Improbable Machines
• The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
• Mathematics for Big Data
• The Un(solv)able Problem
• The Mechanization of Mathematics
• Mathematics as an Empirical Phenomenon, Subject to Modeling
• Does 2 + 3 = 5? In Defense of a Near Absurdity
• Gregory’s Sixth Operation
• Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning: What Math Can Teach Us about Finding Order in our Chaotic Lives
• Ethics in Statistical Practice and Communication: Five Recommendations
• The Fields Medal Should Return to Its Roots
• The Erdős Paradox
• Contributors
• Notable Writings
• Acknowledgments
• Credits