Good programming/math literature

Question

I recently read The Numerati by Stephen Baker. It is an AMAZING book which really opens your eyes to all the possibilities of new emerging technology.

I was wondering if anyone (preferably who has read The Numerati) could suggest a good read?

I'm not looking for anything "code related".

Thanks!

Answer 1

A good math read is The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, which is basically a biography of Paul Erdős along with a series of short discussions of interesting number theory.

Answer 2

You might want to read Supercrunchers. It's similar to The Numerati.

Answer 3

• Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos.
• The Millenium Problems by Keith Devlin.

...and pretty much anything else by either of these two authors.

Others you may enjoy include:

• Fooled by Randomness
• Unknown Quantity
• Fermat's Enigma

Answer 4

Suprecrunchers is great, as is Fermat's Enigma. The Code book is also really interesting and relatively easy to understand.

I'd also give a shout out to The Man who loved only numbers.

Answer 5

Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. The full text is actually available online from his own site. Sample chapter.

Answer 6

Biographies:

• The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
• Adventures of a Mathematician (Stanislav Ulam)
• Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

Documentary-style nonfiction

• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
• Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
• The Soul Of A New Machine
• The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

Philosophical/educational (breadth)

• Archimedes' Revenge
• Chaos: Making a New Science

Philosophical/educational (depth)

• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
• The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

Answer 7

Check out my list of good recently published books related to .NET development:

http://www.riaguy.com/books/

Answer 8

God Created the Integers, by Stephen Hawking