Pitici M. (ed.) The Best Writing on Mathematics 2014

Princeton University Press, 2015. — 360 p. — ISBN: 978-0-691-16417-5.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.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 GapsNotable WritingsCredits