How Mathematicians Think
William Byers
(Princeton, Rs.395)
Either you like it or you don't. That's exactly what my Maths teacher told us when we were at school. And then he added, “If you like it, then you will actually begin to love it.” How true!
This book does just that… it helps numbers-allergic people understand that the nature of mathematical thinking is such that it can actually help one analyse and teach us a great deal about the human condition itself. And as the tag line suggests, “using ambiguity, contradiction and paradox…'
Byers, a professor of Mathematics, marries Maths and psychology and “courageously points out that mathematics today is obsessed with rigour, and this actually suppresses creativity…” by asking some fundamental questions: Is mathematics objectively true? And is there such a thing as ‘final' scientific theory?
The Book of General Ignorance
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
(Penguin, Rs. 699)
Did you know that light is invisible or Nelson never wore an eye-patch or that bees buzz to communicate? Well, if you think you're a trivia expert, then this one is for you.
British TV men Lloyd (producer of the hit comedy shows ‘Spitting Image' and ‘Black Adder') and Mitchinson (writer for ‘Quite Interesting') may disabuse you of the notion that you're a true scholar of random facts — and quickly.
Their surprisingly lengthy tome is packed with real answers to a number of less-than-burning questions. Sample these: Camels store fat, not water, in their humps. Only five out of every 100,000 paper clips are used to clip papers. The first American President was, in fact, Peyton Randolph.
Although some of the entries rely on technicality more than actual excavation of obscure fact (Honolulu is technically the world's largest city, despite the fact that 72 per cent of its 2,127 square miles is under water), these entries are entertaining and informative, perfect for trivia buffs and know-it-alls.
The Nature of Space And Time
Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose
(Princeton University Press, Rs.195)
Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. But was he right? Can the quantum theory of fields and Einstein's general theory of relativity, the two most accurate and successful theories in all of physics, be united in a single quantum theory of gravity? Can quantum and cosmos ever be combined?
Two of the world's most famous physicists — Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose debate these questions. Penrose refuses to believe that quantum mechanics is a final theory. Hawking thinks otherwise, and argues that general relativity simply cannot account for how the universe began. Only a quantum theory of gravity, coupled with the no-boundary hypothesis, can ever hope to explain adequately what little we can observe about our universe.
With the final debate, the reader will come to realise how much Hawking and Penrose diverge in their opinions about the ultimate quest to combine quantum mechanics and relativity, and how differently they have tried to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Madhouse: True Stories of the Inmates of Hostel 4, IIT-B
Edited by Urmilla Deshpande
(Westland, Rs. 295)
These guys did some really crazy things… one went on horseback to attend his lecture (he actually ‘parked' the horse in the cycle stand!), another was detained by the police for splashing around in the campus lakes and then he travelled all the way back to campus by bus… clad in skimpy swimming trunks! And to think they are IITians!
Such funny anecdotes pepper this book that recounts the lives of the inmates of Hostel 4 at IIT Bombay. These guys spent five or more years in the company of others from all sorts of families, and from all parts of the country. The one thing they all had in common was a certain kind of intelligence — the kind that got them through the qualifying exams. Yet a certain kind of emotional bond was formed between them, who by the end of their course as they waited for the bus sighed, “God knows when we will meet again. I hope we do.”
As one student blogged, “They are truly the original ‘3 Idiots'!”
