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New Books in Mathematics — Natural Sciences
New Books in Mathematics

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

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Latest Episodes:

Lynn Gamwell, “Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History” (Princeton UP, 2015) Jan 05, 2016

Show notes

Today I’m talking with Lynn Gamwell about Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History (Princeton University Press, 2015). This book is a breathtaking combination of scholarship and beauty, tracing the interplay of mathematics and art throughout mankind’s history, East and West. Gamwell is a lecturer in the history of mathematics and science at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and thus she is uniquely positioned to write a book that brings together the two disparate cultures described by C.P. Snow in his 1959 essay. Snow would have appreciated how the author communicates the depth, passion, and beauty that characterize each culture, while describing how each inspires the other. The in-depth discussion is brought to life by 440 stunning artworks and 102 crystal-clear math diagrams. This is a big, beautifully produced book that you will want to place on your coffee table.

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Brian Clegg, “How Many Moons Does the Earth Have? The Ultimate Science Quiz Book” (Icon Books, 2015) Dec 07, 2015

Show notes

Brian Clegg, who is arguably the most prolific science writer since Isaac Asimov, and almost certainly the most prolific British one, has written a delightfully tantalizing book entitled How Many Moons Does the Earth Have? The Ultimate Science Quiz Book (Icon Books, 2015). It’s a delectable collection of science quiz questions – and although it includes classics such as “Why Is the Sky Blue?”, many will seriously challenge even the most knowledgeable. You may finish the quiz a lot more humble about your scientific knowledge (as did your humbled correspondent), but that is more than compensated by how much you’ll learn about some of the more intriguing and sometimes lesser-known aspects of science — and how much you’ll enjoy it. And isn’t that why you want to read about science in the first place?

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Dan Bouk, “How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) Nov 23, 2015

Show notes

Who made life risky? In his dynamic new book, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (University of Chicago Press, 2015), historian Dan Bouk argues that starting in the late nineteenth century, the life-insurance industry embedded risk-making within American society and American psyches. Bouk is assistant professor of history at Colgate University, and his new book shows how insurers categorized individuals and grouped social classes in ways that assigned monetary value to race, class, lifestyles, and bodies. With lively prose, Bouk gives historical context and character to the rise of the “statistical individual” from the Guided Age to the New Deal. Bouk’s primary argument is that risks did not always already exist, nor was risk invented by the medical establishment. Instead, the threat (and reality) of economic crisis helped insurers to create risk as a commodity, and eventually to control the lives it measured. As Bouk phrases it in the interview, “Insurers improved their bottom line by improving Americans’ bottom lines.” Bouk invites readers critically to reflect upon how we have come to see ourselves through a statistical lens in our daily lives– an issue of continued relevance in the age of big data and vast analytical capabilities.

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John Allen Paulos, “A Numerate Life” (Prometheus Books, 2015) Nov 12, 2015

Show notes

John Allen Paulos, who has accomplished the unheard-of double of writing best-sellers about mathematics and inserting a word (‘innumeracy’) into the language, has attempted another ambitious feat – bringing mathematics to bear on one of the few subjects it has yet to examine: biography and autobiography. A Numerate Life (Prometheus Books, 2015) is simultaneously a charming memoir and a highly entertaining venture into mathematics, literature, and philosophy. This is one of those rare books that, when you have finished a section, you are torn between going on to the next section and re-reading the last section to make sure that you got everything out of it. The subtitle of the book is “A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours”. You’ll be a little skeptical about that subtitle before you read the book, but when you finish it, you’ll realize the subtitle nails it — he’s talking, not just about himself, but about you. fascinating read.

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Arthur Benjamin, “The Magic of Math” (Basic Book, 2015) Sep 30, 2015

Show notes

Today we’ll be talking about The Magic of Math (Basic Books, 2015)by Arthur Benjamin. This is a book that has the gee-whiz feeling you got when you first encountered George Gamow’s classic One, Two, Three … Infinity, but brought up to date and with much more in the way of solid mathematics that students can actually use. What makes this book especially appealing is that Benjamin emphasizes the magic that can be found in the mathematics that students study as they proceed through elementary and secondary schools. Students study arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, but too often the way these courses are taught resembles hospital food – nourishing but tasteless. Every teacher should have a copy of The Magic of Math to help combat the blandness and boredom that students too often experience in the classroom.

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Margaret Morrison, “Reconstructing Reality: Models, Mathematics, and Simulations” (Oxford UP, 2015) Jul 15, 2015

Show notes

Almost 400 years ago, Galileo wrote that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Today, mathematics is integral to physics and chemistry, and is becoming so in biology, economics, and other sciences, although amid great controversy. The messy reality of biological creatures and their social relations cannot be captured in mathematical models or computer simulations, it is argued. But what is the relation between mathematics and physical reality? Do highly abstract mathematical formalisms and computer simulations yield empirical knowledge? If so, when, and how? In Reconstructing Reality: Models, Mathematics and Simulations (Oxford University Press, 2015), Margaret Morrison, Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, considers the epistemological status of the results of modeling and simulation as compared, and typically contrasted with, the results of experiment. She argues that no sharp distinction between simulating the world and measuring the world can be drawn in modern science, and that there is no justification for epistemically privileging the results of experiments over the new knowledge we derive from idealizations, abstractions, and fictional models.

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Christopher J. Phillips, “The New Math: A Political History” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) Mar 26, 2015

Show notes

Christopher J. Phillips‘ new book is a political history of the “New Math,” a collection of curriculum reform projects in the 1950s & 1960s that were partially sponsored by the NSF and involved hundreds of mathematicians, teachers, professors, administrators, parents, and students. The New Math: A Political History (University of Chicago Press, 2015) explores the formation of an idea of the “American subject” in an environment where math was considered to be a component of intelligent citizenship. As classrooms became sites shaped by Cold War politics, efforts to reform mathematics curricula were bound up in ideas of subjectivity and discipline. Phillips pays special attention to the work of the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG) in this context, looking closely at the textbooks that the SMSG produced for children studying at a range of levels. Importantly, The New Math explores not just the production of these textbooks but also what happened when they were actually brought into American classrooms and engaged by teachers, students, and parents. As a result, in addition to being a fascinating political history it’s also a model of how we can treat the archaeology of the classroom as a way to approach the history of science.

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Colin Adams, “Zombies and Calculus” (Princeton UP, 2014) Oct 15, 2014

Show notes

The book discussed in this interview is Zombies and Calculus (Princeton University Press, 2014) by Colin Adams. This is a truly unique book; a novel written in the first-person by the survivor of a zombie apocalypse who has managed to make it that far thanks to his knowledge of calculus. The author starts his narrative by warning the reader that the book is not for the squeamish, but you shouldn’t be deterred by that, as I found the zombies to be more comical than horrific. The book is especially worthwhile for the way it introduces some of the really intriguing applications of calculus that are not typically found in the standard three-semester calculus sequence, and the author has done a good job of making those applications relevant to his tale. In an era when education competes with entertainment for attention – and generally fights a losing battle – books such as Zombies and Calculus are to be applauded. They may prevent some of those taking math courses from becoming classroom zombies.

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Jordan Ellenberg, “How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking” (Penguin Press, 2014) Jul 08, 2014

Show notes

The book discussed in this interview is How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (Penguin Press, 2014), by Jordan Ellenberg. This is one of those rare books that belong on the reading list of every educated person, especially those who love mathematics, but more importantly, those who hate it. Ellenberg succeeds in explaining the value of mathematical reasoning without ever needing to go into technical detail, which makes the book ideal for those who want to learn why mathematics is so important. What makes the book doubly delightful is Ellenberg’s writing style; he intersperses the math with amusing anecdotes, dispensed with a sense of humor rarely found in books such as this. The book is chock-full of OMG moments; the introductory anecdote about Abraham Wald and the missing bullet holes absolutely whets the appetite for more and Ellenberg never fails to deliver.

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Sue VanHattum, “Playing with Math: Stories from Math Circles, Homeschoolers, and Passionate Teachers” (Natural Math, 2015) Jun 26, 2014

Show notes

[Re-published with permission from Inspired by Math] Sue VanHattum is a math professor, blogger, mother, author/editor, and fundraiser. She’s a real powerhouse of motivation for making math fun and accessible to more of our young folks. Sue has teamed up with a number of writers to compile a book, Playing With Math, which she is producing in partnership withMaria Droujkova in a community sponsored publication model.

Sue and I shared a delightful chat about what math is, what the book is about, and how we can all get more inspired to engage in math with our kids. And, Sue sprinkles the conversation with some interesting open-ended math problems. Think part coffee table conversation part math circle.

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