Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Problems with a Point: Exploring Math and Computer Science


As you can see from Lance's tweet


               Problems with a Point: Exploring Math and Computer Science
               by Gasarch and Kruskal

(ADDED LATER- the World scientific website has more info than amazon and has a table of contents, so here it is: here)

is now available! The tweet says its $68.00 but that's hardcover- paperback is $38.00 (are covers that expensive) and if you like your books already broken in, there are some used copies for $89.00. Makes sense to me (no it doesn't!). Could be the topic of a blog post (probably already was).

Okay, so whats in the book?  One of my favorite types of blog posts is when I make a point ABOUT math and then do some math to underscore that point.  I went through all of my blogs (all? No, I doubt I did that) and picked out blogs of that type. With Clyde's help we EXPANDED and POLISHED and GOT THE MATH RIGHT (in some cases I didn't have any math so we had to supply it).

When I first got a copy (about a month ago) I just couldn't stop reading it. I really like it! This is a non-trivial remark -- often authors get tired of their book, or after a while and wonder things like ``why did I write 300 page on the muffin problem? What was I thinking?'' So the fact that I am very pleased with it is not obvious. Does it mean you will?

If you ever thought `I wish bill would clean up his posts spelling and grammar AND expand on the math AND make it a more cohesive whole' then buy the book!

I will in future posts describe more about writing the book, but this is probably my last post where I plug the book.

bill g.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:37 PM, February 26, 2019

    Title sounds pretty interesting.
    Is there a "table of contents" available online that one can look at before buying?
    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. GASARCH1:42 PM, February 26, 2019

      thanks for the heads up and the interest. I was surprised amazon didn't have a table of contents, but World Scientific(my publisher) does and I have added that link to the post.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous11:16 PM, February 26, 2019

    >I wish bill would clean up his posts spelling and grammar AND expand no the math

    Did you intentionally make spelling and grammar mistakes here?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. GASARCH11:22 PM, February 26, 2019

      Alas, I wish I could say that I did. OH - I COULD say that but that would be lying. However, your comment made me reread and make corrections-I caught 4 typos. Normally I tell the reader of changes but time it seemed distracting, so I will just say in this comment that YES, the comment this is replying to WAS correct in its noticing that mistake, and inspired me to reread and fix others. Kudos!

      Delete
  3. EG5:15 AM, February 27, 2019

    >If you ever thought `I wish bill would clean up his posts spelling and grammar AND expand on the math AND make it a more cohesive whole' then buy the book!

    Good enough reason to make a purchase; in any case, sounds like good stuff that will keep my attention focused for the next weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous3:46 AM, March 24, 2019

    I read the book ("Printed as BoD"), it makes a light and inspiring reading as Ken Regan already observed. For ex-researchers some rusty math- and tcs-reminiscences are revived. Teachers will find a wealth of material to be used in class and puzzlers can update their stock of problems.
    For the second edition two corrections:
    Lemma 13.3 has b_n = 0 mod a, but according to Definition 13.4. it should be b_n-1.
    Lemma 21.1 (1) does probably need that a and b are mutually prime. A counterexample is (2) as sigma(2) = 3 and Sigma (4) = 7 != 9.

    ReplyDelete

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