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#1 2016-07-22 17:14:12

Songbird
Guest

Looking for math books or interesting games

To clarify, I'm not looking for text books or review books or anything of that sort. I'm looking for some kind of book that holds some wealth of knowledge on math as a whole and makes the descriptions and depictions as fun and wonderful as math really is. Textbooks are often matter of fact and off putting in their presentation, so for reference, the only book I've found along these lines is "The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics" edited by Timothy Ferris. I've completed AP Calculus with a 5 in my junior year and was unable to take any math beyond that in my senior year because I was the only student who was that ahead unfortunately. In addition to any book, a video game, preferably on the computer, that holds the same description and interest as a book of the nature I just described would be marvelous, but I'm unsure of the existence of such a game.

A little bit about myself to let you know why I'm looking for this, if you don't care you can skip to the bottom, I don't mind. I really found math boring for a pretty decent chunk of my life until I got into upper level math classes and really got to see how everything in the world is connected. I love finding mathematical properties that link things together or reading about different topics on mathematical phenomena because it just seems like the closest thing to real magic we're ever going to experience. Having knowledge about how numbers can predict different things, determine behaviors, and find missing information is what drove me to love math. I plan on being a math teacher when I graduate from college and I'm going into my first semester of it soon. Lately, I've had stress induced tremors in my hands and arms that make it somewhat difficult to perform day to day tasks such as bringing a spoon to my mouth without it spilling or holding a controller for a video game steady in my hands. This can be pretty daunting and depressing so I've been on the look for literature to try and cheer me up or to at least take my mind off of things while I learn about it's contents. Hopefully I can find something scholarly enough that isn't as depressingly forward as a textbook is to pique my interest.

TLDR: I'm past AP Calculus and I want to know if there are any books or games out there that are about math, hold genuine interest, and don't seem too "textbooky."

Thank you for reading this and giving me your consideration.

#2 2016-07-22 17:22:43

bobbym
bumpkin
From: Bumpkinland
Registered: 2009-04-12
Posts: 109,606

Re: Looking for math books or interesting games

Hi;

Textbooks all have one mother. Two million years ago some hairy ape-man or man-ape depending on which anthropologist you talk to, wrote the first one. It was written on clay tablets and weighed about 2500 tons. Since then all authors have read that book and created their own condensed version of it. Essentially, they read a very big ( and heavy ) book and wrote a smaller and lighter one. Since that mother of all math textbooks was an utter bore the children can be not be much different.

I like Martin Gardner books.


In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
If it ain't broke, fix it until it is.
Always satisfy the Prime Directive of getting the right answer above all else.

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