The New York Times Book of Mathematics

April 22, 2013
Science writer and reporter Kolata (Rethinking Thin) has compiled article reprints in a demonstration of the multiple personalities of mathematics. From party conversation fodder to the esoteric, topics and authors appear and reappear all in the articulate, clever voice that can be expected from the New York Times. Articles both brief and extended are divided into broad categories of general mathematics; statistics and coincidences; famous problems throughout mathematical history; chaos and randomness; cryptography; computers in mathematics; and mathematicians themselves. Readers might recognize contributors such as James Gleick, Malcolm Browne, David Cay Johnston, Paul Hoffman, and John Tierney, among many others. Readers will find answers to such varied questions as: How can chaos theory be applied to the stock market? Does the evidence support weather as a cause of arthritis pain? How solid is the conjecture of environmental toxins as a cause of disease clusters? Many fascinating problems are explained in language that the layperson will understand, without relying on equations; those with more than a passing interest in mathematics will find many topics of interest worthy of further reading. This compilation of real-world applications will interest those with an inclination toward mathematics or problem-solving.

April 15, 2013

Collecting articles of a mathematical bent from three centuries of pieces found in America's most celebrated daily newspaper, Kolata (senior writer, New York Times; Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It) displays her expertise as an editor in a book that is both a history of modern mathematics--as an academic, social, and political phenomenon--and a Who's Who of great science/math writers. Kolata herself features heavily in the book's pages, as does James Gleick (The Information). The book is divided into thematic sections and is only occasionally chronological. Among topics covered are the National Security Agency's (NSA's) threats to mathematicians writing papers with code-breaking applications; the celebrated story of Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem; Grigori Perelman's confirmation of the Poincare conjecture and his subsequent, Bobby Fischer-like, disappearance. These articles, both feature pieces and news reports, were all written at the time of what they cover, thus offering an immediacy lacking in some popular histories. Some of the pieces included here are important and some are curiosities, but all are absorbing. VERDICT Recommended for casual and serious math enthusiasts.--J.J.S. Boyce, Manitoba Metis Federation, Canada

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