The World According to Wavelets: The Story of a Mathematical Technique in the Making

by Barbara Burke Hubbard

This best-selling book introduces a broad audience including scientists and engineers working in a variety of fields as well as mathematicians from other subspecialties to one of the most active new areas of applied mathematics and the story of its discovery and development. Organized in "hypertext fashion," the book tells a story of scientific discovery with separate brief entries for technical terms and explicit appendices in a section called "Beyond Plain English."

Genres: Mathematics, Nonfiction, Science

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 1996

Reviews

[Darin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author was an English major in college, which must be why the book was so easy to read. The first part of the book is primarily historical in nature, explaining how wavelets (as of 1998) came about. In this part will be boxes with some technical details. The second half of the book has chapters for each of these boxes explaining the theory in more detail.

Note that I believe (and follow) the meanings Goodreads gives for what each number of stars means. Therefore, the majority of my ratings are 3 stars ("liked it").

[Ryan Croke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book for people that are looking for a wonderfully written book about wavelets. No way I would recommend this to someone that does not have a background in the field but if one does, this is a gem.

I wish there were more books like this; mathematics needs to be more accessible. And the question is, why isn't it??? This is a mathematically precise book, written by an English major. Why is there not more of this?

Congrats to the author and thank you for such a work. I wish you could do this for more advanced concepts.

[Khaled Julfiker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspired my Master’s thesis, where I studied and developed methods to solve LTI and LTV ODEs and receding horizon optimal control in wavelet domain.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent example of the potential of science writing to present serious topics in a comprehensive but engaging way. Hubbard takes a seemingly inaccessible topic of ostensibly zero interest to the general public, and creates an engaging narrative that could get anyone interested in this new signal processing technique. Amazingly, this is done without watering-down or sensationalizing.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read. The author does an excellent job of explaining a mathematical technique without getting "lost in the trees"

[Matthew Macclary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author does a good job of simplifying the concepts as much as possible which provides a good intuitive introduction.