#24 in Philosophy of science books
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Reddit mentions of Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (Princeton Science Library (84))

Sentiment score: 3
Reddit mentions: 4

We found 4 Reddit mentions of Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (Princeton Science Library (84)). Here are the top ones.

Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (Princeton Science Library (84))
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Height9.25 Inches
Length6 Inches
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Release dateJuly 2009
Weight0.87523518014 Pounds
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Found 4 comments on Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (Princeton Science Library (84)):

u/Orimazer · 3 pointsr/math

I have a few books I read at that age that were great. Most of them are quite difficult, and I certainly couldn't read them all to the end but they are mostly written for a non-professional. I'll talk a little more on this for each in turn. I also read these before my university interview, and they were a great help to be able to talk about the subject outside the scope of my education thus far and show my enthusiasm for Maths.

Fearless Symmetry - Ash and Gross. This is generally about Galois theory and Algebraic Number Theory, but it works up from the ground expecting near nothing from the reader. It explains groups, fields, equations and varieties, quadratic reciprocity, Galois theory and more.

Euler's Gem - Richeson This covers some basic topology and geometry. The titular "Gem" is V-E+F = 2 for the platonic solids, but goes on to explain the Euler characteristic and some other interesting topological ideas.

Elliptic Tales - Ash and Gross. This is about eliptic curves, and Algebraic number theory. It also expects a similar level of knowlege, so builds up everything it needs to explain the content, which does get to a very high level. It covers topics like projective geometry, algebraic curves, and gets on to explaining the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.

Abel's proof - Presic. Another about Galois theory, but more focusing on the life and work of Abel, a contemporary of Galois.

Gamma - Havil. About a lesser known constant, the limit of n to infinity of the harmonic series up to n minus the logarithm of n. Crops up in a lot of places.

The Irrationals - Havil. This takes a conversational style in an overview of the irrational numbers both abstractly and in a historical context.

An Imaginary Tale: The Story of i - Nahin. Another conversational styled book but this time about the square root of -1. It explains quite well their construction, and how they are as "real" as the real numbers.

Some of these are difficult, and when I was reading them at 17 I don't think I finished any of them. But I did learn a lot, and it definitely influenced my choice of courses during my degree. (Just today, I was in a two lectures on Algebraic Number Theory and one on Algebraic Curves, and last term I did a lecture course on Galois Theory, and another on Topology and Groups!)

u/grothendieckchic · 2 pointsr/news

If you're not afraid of math there are some cheap introductory textbooks on topics that might be accessible:
For abstract algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Abstract-Algebra-Second-Mathematics/dp/0486474178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459224709&sr=8-1&keywords=book+of+abstract+algebra+edition+2nd

For Number Theory: http://www.amazon.com/Number-Theory-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/0486682528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459224741&sr=8-1&keywords=number+theory

These books have complimentary material and are accessible introductions to abstract proof based mathematics. The algebra book has all the material you need to understand why quintic equations can't be solved in general with a "quintic" formula the way quadratic equations are all solved with the quadratic formula.

The number theory book proves many classic results without hard algebra, like which numbers are the sum of two squares, etc, and has some of the identities ramanujan discovered.

For an introduction to analytic number theory, a hybrid pop/historical/textbook is : http://www.amazon.com/Gamma-Exploring-Constant-Princeton-Science/dp/0691141339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459225065&sr=8-1&keywords=havil+gamma

This book guides you through some deep territory in number theory and has many proofs accessible to people who remember calculus 2.

u/jez2718 · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

Seems easy enough. The (0,1) gods each demand that you worship a specific 0 < x < 1 every day, and no other 0 < y < 1. They are all infallible, and all say that if you so worship you will be eternally rewarded. Hey presto, one uncountable set of contradictory gods. Easily generalisable to any cardinality too, just have each god have a 'favourite' element of a set with that cardinality.

Naturally I'd worship the ɣ-god, I was very much convinced by The Gospel of Havil.

u/stats_r_us · 1 pointr/math

From reading your post you are not afraid of books that get into the detail. Given that I would recommend anything by Julian Havil (over other more "popular books" but I can offer many popular book level recommendations that are wonderful). Two that spring to mind are: