The Best Writing on Mathematics 2021

by Mircea Pitici

The year’s finest mathematical writing from around the world

This annual anthology brings together the year’s finest mathematics writing from around the world—and you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy the pieces collected here. These essays—from leading names and fresh new voices—delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday aspects of math, offering surprising insights into its nature, meaning, and practice, and taking readers behind the scenes of today’s hottest mathematical debates.

Here, Viktor Blåsjö gives a brief history of “lockdown mathematics”; Yelda Nasifoglu decodes the politics of a seventeenth-century play in which the characters are geometric shapes; and Andrew Lewis-Pye explains the basic algorithmic rules and computational procedures behind cryptocurrencies. In other essays, Terence Tao candidly recalls the adventures and misadventures of growing up to become a leading mathematician; Natalie Wolchover shows how old math gives new clues about whether time really flows; and David Hand discusses the problem of “dark data”—information that is missing or ignored. And there is much, much more.

Genres: Mathematics

297 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 19, 2022

Reviews

[John Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how I said I was excited to update more and just never did but I promise I'm back. Honestly I don't remember every paper in this collection, but I do REALLY remember the ones I loved. Even though these are all math papers, I think there's a fair amount of diversity here in terms of content (i.e. the American Mathematical Society paper and the one about elementary education).

I think my standouts were the cryptocurrency, analysis in an imperfect world, and the Terry Tao papers. I really wanted to understand the inside corners and zeroth powers papers, but unfortunately my math capacity isn't so great as to understand things by just reading them.

Ultimately, a really great and diverse collection of whats going on in academia—I will 100% be buying this year's edition. 4.5/5.

[Isaac Rudich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely anthology with the caveat that probably not all of the articles are for everyone. I found some of it either uninteresting or too jargon heavy about some niche field to really follow. That being said, the articles I enjoyed I REALLY enjoyed. I bet there’s something in here for everyone with an interest in math, be it at a professional or amateur level, be you in a niche fields of research or a mainstream one. (For reference if anyone cares about my background in reference to this review, I’m currently pursuing a PhD in Operations Research)

[Lance Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books never disappoint. As always, there are some gems and some duds in the articles but people would likely disagree which are which. Highly recommend.

[Ray Savarda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Few interesting articles, generally not as interesting as some of the earlier compilations.