Making Math Pop (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

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In an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dartmouth Professor Daniel Rockmore writes about Steven Strogatz’s The Joy of X, which Rockmore calls a “lively and engaging” book about mathematics.

“Strogatz carves the world of math into continents—Numbers, Relationships, Shapes, Change, and Data—and moves easily between math for math’s sake and applied mathematics,” writes Rockmore, chair of the mathematics department and the William. H. Neukom 1964 Professor of Computational Science.

Rockmore says that by the end of the book, “the reader is left with the feeling that this is a guy who is thinking about math all the time. Whether he’s flipping his mattress (group theory), watching The Sopranos (infinite series), negotiating complicated love relationships (dynamical systems), or engaging with family and friends, life is viewed through math goggles. That’s instructive, and I think it will resonate with mathematicians everywhere.”

Read the full story, published 1/14/13 in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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