Reddit reviews Letters to a Young Mathematician (Art of Mentoring (Paperback))
We found 6 Reddit comments about Letters to a Young Mathematician (Art of Mentoring (Paperback)). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Some good readings from the University of Cambridge Mathematical reading list and p11 from the Studying Mathematics at Oxford Booklet both aimed at undergraduate admissions.
I'd add:
Prime obsession by Derbyshire. (Excellent)
The unfinished game by Devlin.
Letters to a young mathematician by Stewart.
The code book by Singh
Imagining numbers by Mazur (so, so)
and a little off topic:
The annotated turing by Petzold (not so light reading, but excellent)
Complexity by Waldrop
I don't want to get very deep into this discussion because, fundamentally, it will turn into a battle of philosophy. Ian Stewart had a chapter dedicated to this very discussion in Letters to a Young Mathematican, wherein he posits that climate will have a very dramatic effect on how their mathematics formed. For example, on an extremely windy planet, the beings would have a stronger grapple on mathematical aerodynamics.
Check out Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart. It is pretty short, and from one of the reviews: From Publishers Weekly "This new entry in the Art of Mentoring series takes the form of letters from a fictitious mathematician to his niece. The letters span a period of 20 years, from the time the niece is thinking about studying mathematics in high school through the early years of her academic career."
No problem! I'm very happy to pass this stuff on to those at your stage, given how much these and similar books helped me. There is another I should mention too: Letters to a Young Mathematician - Stewart. I doesn't cover any mathematical topics, but it does give a window in to what mathematics is like in higher levels. It helped me when deciding to apply for mathematics at Uni.
I especially second Apology and The Music of the Primes. Those were excellent reads.
I find that knowing the historical context in which different leaps were made in mathematics tends to impart momentum to my interest. The stories are wonderful. A lot of these stories are contained in God Created the Integers, Hawking does a good job to write interesting bios of the original authors of the aforementioned seminal works.
I might add a couple of books, one that I think especially applies to somebody in high school considering a venture into math at university:
Letters to a Young Mathematician and Why Beauty is Truth . Both are by Ian Stewart
My pleasure, I am sure that you will find much pleasure in learning math and that it will be a very rewarding experience for you.
I personally always have been interested in math but never had the discipline to truly master it when I was young.
I finally decided to go back to school 3 years ago at the age of 31 and had to start back at the beginning by reviewing my algebra and trigonometry.
I'm now completing my Calculus 3 this semester, I have grown tremendously since the beginning of this wonderful journey and wish I had taken that decision sooner.
My best advice is DON'T BE SHY TO ASK FOR HELP, BE PATIENT AND DON'T GIVE UP you'll be very happy you did.
I recommend you read the following book : Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart
https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Mathematician-Mentoring-Paperback/dp/0465082327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523505140&sr=8-1&keywords=letters+to+a+young+mathematician&dpID=41VlldpRAAL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
It is not a math heavy book and will give you many insights into learning mathematics.
I wish you the best, have fun!