The Best Writing on Mathematics 2014 / / ed. by Mircea Pitici.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• MitwirkendeR: Barany, Michael J.,; Behar, Roberto,; Belcastro, Sarah-Marie,; Braverman, Mark,; Brenton, Lawrence,; Campbell, David K.,; Conway, John H.,; Cukier, Kenneth,; Devlin, Keith,; Dunham, Penelope,; Ellenberg, Jordan,; Gale, David,; Gordon, Marshall,; Grima, Pere,; Hayes, Brian,; Kalantari, Bahman,; Khovanova, Tanya,; Lazar, Nicole,; Leron, Uri,; Marco-Almagro, Lluís,; Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor,; Motter, Adilson E.,; Pitici, Mircea,; Pollard, Stephen,; Shapley, Lloyd S.,; Shipman, Joseph,; Su, Francis Edward,; Sun, John Z.,; Séquin, Carlo H.,; Torrence, Bruce,; Varshney, Lav R.,; Zaslavsky, Orit,; Zazkis, Dov,; Zazkis, Rina,
• HerausgeberIn: Pitici, Mircea,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Pilot project. eBook available to selected US libraries only
• Language: English
• Series: The Best Writing on Mathematics ; 5
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.) :; 34 color illus. 60 halftones. 30 line illus.

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 2014 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 writings offer surprising insights into the nature, meaning, and practice of mathematics today. They delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday occurrences of math, and take readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates. Here John Conway presents examples of arithmetical statements that are almost certainly true but likely unprovable; Carlo Séquin explores, compares, and illustrates distinct types of one-sided surfaces known as Klein bottles; Keith Devlin asks what makes a video game good for learning mathematics and shows why many games fall short of that goal; Jordan Ellenberg reports on a recent breakthrough in the study of prime numbers; Stephen Pollard argues that mathematical practice, thinking, and experience transcend the utilitarian value of mathematics; and much, much more.In addition to presenting the year's most memorable writings on mathematics, this must-have anthology includes an introduction by editor Mircea Pitici. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in where math has taken us-and where it is headed.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Mathematics and the Good Life -- The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think about the World -- Conway's Wizards -- On Unsettleable Arithmetical Problems -- Crinkly Curves -- Why Do We Perceive Logarithmically? -- The Music of Math Games -- The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra for Artists -- The Arts-Digitized, Quantified, and Analyzed -- On the Number of Klein Bottle Types -- Adventures in Mathematical Knitting -- The Mathematics of Fountain Design: A Multiple-Centers Activity -- Food for (Mathematical) Thought -- Wondering about Wonder in Mathematics -- The Lesson of Grace in Teaching -- Generic Proving: Reflections on Scope and Method -- Extreme Proofs I: The Irrationality of √2 -- Stuck in the Middle: Cauchy's Intermediate Value Theorem and the History of Analytic Rigor -- Plato, Poincaré, and the Enchanted Dodecahedron: Is the Universe Shaped Like the Poincaré Homology Sphere? -- Computing with Real Numbers, from Archimedes to Turing and Beyond -- Chaos at Fifty -- Twenty-Five Analogies for Explaining Statistical Concepts -- College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage -- The Beauty of Bounded Gaps -- Contributors -- Notable Writings -- Acknowledgments -- Credits