The book review (due February 12)
You will need to both email a .pdf to me at fjsteachmath@gmail.com,
as well as to turnitin.com.
Here is the information for our class:
Math 629 History of Mathematics Class ID: 23869119 Class Enrollment Key:
Sottile629
I keep forgetting the following: Please make your review double-spaced (acrtually 1.3 or 1.5 will do), also 12 pt type for
my old eyes, and
a running head with your name and finally, page numbers. Thanks.
Your first paper is a review of a book that contains both
a nontrivial amount of history and a nontrivial amount of mathematics.
Note that a book review is not a paper on the book, or even just a summaary. I encourage you to look up some
reviews of books (not on-line reviews, but those published in newspapers and magazines) to help you gain an idea of what
constitutes a review.
There are many (perhaps too many) possibilities.
This could be, for example
- a biography of a mathematician, such as
S. Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: Biography of John Nash, Jr, or
S. Batterson, Stephen Smale.
- a memoir or autobiography, such as
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, or
P. Halmos, I Want to be a Mathematician.
- a history of a branch of mathematics, such as
Carl Boyer, The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development.
- a history of a particular period of mathematics, such as
Frank J. Swetz, Capitalism and Arithmetic: The new math of the 15th Century, or
J.L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam.
- a story of a particular mathematical development, such as
David Bressoud, Proofs and Confirmations: the story of the alternating sign matrix conjecture, or
J.W. Dauben, Abraham Robinson; the creation of non-standard analysis, a personal and mathematical odyssey.
- Liping Ma's book "Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics". This is profoundly interesting.
- Books my students reviewed in the past
This is by no means exhaustive, even of the types of books that are available.
I just went through the list of books in my library and picked out a few (of about 50 on history and
biography) that are representative.
I have read all of these sometime in the past 35 years.
More extensive lists appear on the course pages of my predecessors,
I would prefer that you each choose different books.
I am keeping track of this on my page.
A list of specialty online bookstores is on Fulling's
Links page.
Some of these books may be available from a local library or through other electronic resources.
Please let me know (short email to fjsteachmath@gmail.com or via Piazza) which book
you plan to review.
We can also discuss this.
Get to this soon, as I would prefer people to each choose different books, and your favourite might get selected.
Further:
-
The books listed above on the pages of my predecessors vary in level, including level of scholarship and mathematical maturity required.
-
Most of you are teachers or parents or both. If you read a book
intended for a popular or juvenile audience, write your review from the
perspective "I do/don't recommend this book for students at level X."
- Several of the biograpies contain references that delve into
the mathematics at a more technical level (for example, the subject's actual research papers).
Maybe you could follow up some of those leads.
- The review is due 12 February 2020, it is to be at least 1000 words long, and will be handed in both to turnitin.com, as well as emailed to my
teaching email: fjsteachmath@gmail.com.
I will mark it both for content and for quality of writing, but more the first than the second.
Special Thanks to Prof. Fulling, whose page this is based upon
Last modified: Sun Feb 9 07:13:02 CET 2020