[seqfan] Re: Two "dumb" sequences and a question

[John Mason]

I bought  "The World of Mathematics" in the US in the early 90's. It was a
boxed set sealed in cellophane.
The customs guard at the Milan airport where I landed had me open it up, I
guess to check there were no drugs.
john

On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 8:48 PM Tom Duff <eigenvectors at gmail.com> wrote:

> It occurs to me (after spending a couple of hours on this long-winded
> message)
> that a favorite "non-mathematician" reference on a lot of mathematical
>  topics is
> "The World of Mathematics", edited by James R Newman. It's a four-volume
> set
> of essays about a broad variety of mathematical topics. My parents gave me
> a
> copy when I was in high school. I kept it by my bedside for years, and I
> still find it
> delightful and illuminating. Be aware that it's pretty dated. It was
> published in 1956
> and perforce misses a lot of important modern mathematics -- no coverage of
> the
> proofs of the 4-color theorem, Fermat's last theorem and the Poincare
> conjecture,
> or of computational complexity (e.g. the existence of NP-complete problems)
> and
> other computer science topics, etc.
>
>
>