Marco Ciampa wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 02:49:24PM +0200, ahmet alper parker wrote:
> In this respect, people like me
> needs some introductory text, well written, with no assumption of prior
> knowledge...something that I espect could leverage the curiosity of the
> reader, something able to attract people to more specialized reading giving
> some general knowledge useful for orienteering in the wide (and wild) fields
> of math.
> Am I asking too much? :-))))))))
> PS: as an example, I love electronics. I always suggest the "Art of
> electronics" by Horowiz & Hill as the best book ever in this field. Simple
> and wonderful. Is there anything similar for Math?
I agree that is an excellent book for electronics, but would you
recommend it to an 8 year old? There are many different notions of a
"Beginner". It is hard for us to recommend when we don't know which
definition you use. Also, electronics is a much smaller field than
mathematics. Even all of physics is smaller than mathematics.
For general applied mathematics I think there is a very nice book called
"Practical Applied Mathematics" by Sam Howison. This is a book about how
to create mathematical models of phenomena, and a little about how to
solve such models. It is more like the Feynman Lectures on physics than
a math text with definitions, lemmas, and proofs of main theorems. In
fact it assumes you know a moderate amount of mathematics, and it tries
to show you how to use that knowledge to create models.
To read it you should have a calculus background and a physics
background. Perhaps a 3rd year undergraduate physics or engineering
major. However it will not teach you much about mathematics, more like
how to use mathematics.
For something very general about "all of mathematics" perhaps the
"Princeton Companion to Mathematics" is what you are looking for? It is
a massive collection of essays, each one telling a little about some field.