Popular Mathematics Books

I recently put out an APB to other science writers on Twitter and LinkedIn, asking for recommendations for good books that explain math for the layman. I have been a math groupie for many years, enjoying books like The Man Who Knew Infinity and The Art of Mathematics. I knew, though, that there must be many more good reads out there in the world. I got some great tips, which I listed below. If you, dear reader, have any other recommendations, please leave a comment.

The World of Mathematics

The Number Devil

A Short Account of the History of Mathematics

Mathematics for the Million

The Music of the Primes

Fermat's Enigma

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving

Math Girls

The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World

Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

A Tour of the Calculus

The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics

The Cartoon Guide to Calculus

Mathematics and Physics

Here's a great video showing Paul Davies explaining the role of mathematics in physics.

Can Math Be Beautiful?

Here's an amazing video clip of a panel at last year's World Science Festival about the beauty of mathematics.  I'm definitely not the best mathematician, but I am a math groupie, and I have experienced my mind being blown by a cool proof.  During a short course in college I learned about the proof showing that the square root of two is irrational.  I don't remember how to recreate the proof, but I do remember that it made my brain freeze.

Euclid in the Rainforest -- Book Review

Euclid in the Rainforest: Discovering Universal Truth in Logic and Math by Joseph Mazur
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I really, really wanted to like this book. The table of contents sounded so interesting: infinity! logic! how math pertains to reality! But, the further I got into the book, the more frustrated I became. Each section -- infinity, logic, and reality -- contains several chapters, but it's never clear to the reader how each chapter relates to the overarching theme. Moreover, each chapter itself seemed just like a collection of math-related stories, one after the other, with no obvious link. (I'm sure there *were* links, but I would have had to work to find them.) Also -- and this may seem like a nit-picking critique -- the weak topic sentences really got in the way of my understanding each paragraph. Topic sentences have to set up the rest of the sentences in a paragraph, giving the reader a kind of road map, but these didn't. Arrrrgh! In my opinion, the book should be rewritten under the watchful eye of a careful editor.

View all my reviews