Books I've read since the last book post:
A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann. Nonfiction.
About: the history of my favorite constant, pi.
My thoughts: Written in the 1970's, updated in the 1980's, a history from the beginning of time about who figured out how to calculate pi, and how accurate they were. This books combines 2 of my favorite subjects - history and math. As my friend Tim aptly observed, "Sticky pages - lots of sticky pages for Phil."
Lasting Image: The Romans were thugs. Sir Isaac Newton had a larger impact on the scientific world than Einstein. In fact, after centuries of inadequate definition by dozens of mathematicians, Newton mathematically described pi as an afterthought, needing it to prove one of his laws of physics. Think of that - after dozens of brilliant folks labored untold hours, Newton said "Oh, by the way, here's pi". And it sat in his desk for nearly a decade until a colleague convinced him it was worth publishing!
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. Nonfiction.
About: a collection of short stories themed around Christmas.
Lasting Image: 1. David working as an elf in Macy's Santaland. A group of severely retarded visitors came one day, and David realized afterward that he could no longer differentiate them from the "normal" visitors.
2. Perhaps the most wickedly funny holiday newsletter I've ever read.
3 comments:
By the way, do you know that in the State of Illinois there was a proposition made to the Senate in around 1890 (made by some idiot, who also was a prominent businessman - whose name I can't remember at the moment but can check on) to make pi equal to 3.2 and this was about to be seriously considered, but fortunately that session was visited by a mathematician (whose name I also can check on) who ridiculed the idea saying that it would be the same as proposing to consider the Earth being flat (at least in the state of Illinois).
Irina
I read the book. CRAZY ending. Thanks as always for being my personal "book concierge".
~j
I wrote a 21 page paper on pi in college.
Post a Comment