What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus
Owen Gingerich · 320 pages
Isaac Newton
James Gleick · 272 pages
"In this biography, James Gleick moves between a comprehensive historical portrait and a dramatic focus on Newton's significant letters and unpublished notebooks to illuminate the real importance of his work in physics, in optics, and in calculus. He makes us see the old intuitive, alchemical universe out of which Newton's mathematics first arose and shows us how Newton's ideas have altered all fo
The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe
Donal O'Shea · 304 pages
Conceived in 1904, the Poincaré conjecture, a puzzle that speaks to the possible shape of the universe and lies at the heart of modern topology and geometry, has resisted attempts by generations of mathematicians to prove or to disprove it. Despite a million-dollar prize for a solution, Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, posted his solution on the Internet instead of publishing it in a peer-
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
Simon Singh · 336 pages
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy
A History of π
Petr Beckmann · 204 pages
The history of pi, says the author, though a small part of the history of mathematics, is nevertheless a mirror of the history of man. Petr Beckmann holds up this mirror, giving the background of the times when pi made progress and also when it did not, because science was being stifled by militarism or religious fanaticism. The mathematical level of this book is flexible, and there is plenty for
Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
Nathalia Holt · 427 pages
"The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn’t turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design,
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century
David Salsburg · 352 pages
Discusses how statistics have changed the field of science in the twentieth century, focusing on the theories and ideas of famous scientists and thinkers.
The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics
Marcus du Sautoy · 351 pages
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Charles Seife · 248 pages
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity’s twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything. In Zero, Scie
Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
John Derbyshire · 435 pages
Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide
Alex Reinhart · 152 pages
Scientific progress depends on good research, and good research needs good statistics. But statistical analysis is tricky to get right, even for the best and brightest of us. You'd be surprised how many scientists are doing it wrong. Statistics Done Wrong is a pithy, essential guide to statistical blunders in modern science that will show you how to keep your research blunder-free. You'll examine
Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
Norbert Wiener · 212 pages
Acclaimed one of the "seminal books ... comparable in ultimate importance to ... Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead."--Saturday Review.
The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction
Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Jerome Friedman · 549 pages
Describes important statistical ideas in machine learning, data mining, and bioinformatics. Covers a broad range, from supervised learning (prediction), to unsupervised learning, including classification trees, neural networks, and support vector machines.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Edward R. Tufte · 197 pages
The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relat
Linked: The New Science of Networks
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi · 294 pages
A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate. All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the nations foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previoulsy thought. Grasping
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning
Christopher M. Bishop · 738 pages
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth
Paul Hoffman · 301 pages
"Paul Erdos, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our time, forsook all creature comforts - including a hometo pursue his lifelong study of numbers. He was a man who possessed unimaginable powers of thought yet was unable to manage some of the simplest daily tasks." "For more than six decades, Erdos lived out of two tattered suitcases, crisscrossing four continents at a frenzied pace,
The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
Steven H. Strogatz · 336 pages
Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, insight, and brilliant illustrations. Whether he is illuminating how often you should flip your mattress
Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science
Ronald L. Graham, Donald Ervin Knuth, Oren Patashnik · 657 pages
"This book introduces the mathematics that supports advanced computer programming and the analysis of algorithms. The primary aim of its well-known authors is to provide a solid and relevant base of mathematical skills - the skills needed to solve complex problems, to evaluate horrendous sums, and to discover subtle patterns in data. It is an indispensable text and reference not only for computer
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe · 312 pages
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a
On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics And Astronomy
Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, Albert Einstein, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei · 256 pages