Mathematical Recreations (Kraitchik)
I have too many old math books in my basement. Years ago, I made a practice of attempting to read one math book each summer, and to see how far I got before I gave up. Reasons for giving up: the math moved beyond me, or the notation became tiresome to figure out.
There are times when I might prefer a sentence to a nifty equation. Consider the difference between four or five lines of programming, and a single line of "clever code" that can accomplish the entire thing. Or even a paragraph explaining just what is going on.
Sometimes I feel I'm not the audience for these books, which is usually a 1940s grad student or above, or a 21st-century math professor (and above).
This book has been in my possession for at least a decade, and was taken from a pile of discards in the William E. Grady Technical-Vocational High School teacher center, which was formerly the Math Dept office. The book had been removed from circulation from the school library years earlier.
The title Recreations caught my attention, because I thought it might be more fun and games and puzzles. Not exactly, but still interesting. The problem with math puzzles is that once you work one out, they lose a little of the magic. And repetition of similar problems start to feel like homework. On the other extreme, problems that are impossible to figure out (or just behind your capability) are too frustrating.
That said, there was some interesting "stuff" in the books, including an old sheet of paper containing a list of scholastic websites on one side (they're probably all dead links by this point), and calculations on the back, mostly related to Pythagorean Theorem. I had several posts about those over a decade ago.
When I picked up this book at the beginning of the month, I thought I could possible knock off a chapter every day or two, and then write about it on my math blog. Rather than link all the individual posts, here is the link to the "Books" tag.
All the posts relating to this book are in December 2019. There will possibly be a wrap-up post in 2020, but I don't have time to think about it and write it now. Other projects are coming up with deadlines.
This book will probably be left on a table at the next Heliosphere science fiction convention in NY in April. Hopefully, there will be another math book there to join it. I hope to tackle another one (also with a page of notes as a bookmark) after I finish a couple other things.
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