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Currently Reading:
Math for English Majors
A Human Take on the Universal Language
by Ben Orlin
I wasn't an English Major, but I am loving this book. It explores math as a language, with nouns, verbs, prepositions, grammar, etymology, idioms, and literature, just like English or Spanish or any other language.
And it's filled with silly stick figure drawings.
This book is for:
people who have spent a lifetime saying, “I’m not a math person”
bewildered students
bewildered parents
longtime math lovers keen to hear their own language with fresh ears
you
Questions the book digs into:
What exactly is the math we teach in schools?
Why do so many of us struggle to wring meaning from it?
How does math even work?
How can shuffling symbols teach us new things about reality?
Math with Bad Drawings Website
Change is the Only Constant
The Wisdom of Calculus
by Ben Orlin
This book is about moments and eternities. It's about Calculus: a "language of change, a stab at quantifying the flux and flow of this wobbling top called Earth" (page 14).
“A funny, smart, endlessly engaging book—that just happens to be about one of the most important and complicated subjects on the planet.”
– David Litt, New York Times-bestselling author of Thanks, Obama and speechwriter for President Obama
Math with Bad Drawings Website
Past Math Reads:
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
by Charles Seife
I cannot recommend this book enough!
Funny and shockingly dramatic, this book goes through the history of the number zero from when humans first started counting, to when they came up with zero, to when they finally accepted zero after thousands of years of rejecting and fearing it, all the way to Einstein and string theory.
There is so much more to this number than I realized! I could not put this book down and couldn't stop telling people about it for months.
Math and the Mona Lisa
The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci
by Bulent Atalay
This one was a little tougher to get through, but I learned a lot about Leonardo da Vinci and the beautiful connections he found between math, science, and art in "proportions, patterns, shapes, and symmetries [...] in nature." (quote from the book description)
On the Shelf:
Cutting School
Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education
by Noliwe Rooks
"An astounding look at America's segregated school system, weaving together historical dynamics of race, class, and growing inequality into one concise and commanding story. Cutting School puts our schools at the center of the fight for a new commons."
― Naomi Klein
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