Book: Beautiful, Simple, Exact, Crazy

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Beautiful, Simple, Exact, Crazy: Mathematics in the Real World

Anna Lachowska, lecturer in mathematics, and Apoorva Khare, research associate in mathematics and statistics at Stanford University

(Yale University Press)

In this book, Apoorva Khare and Anna Lachowska explain the mathematics essential for understanding and appreciating the quantitative world. They show with examples that mathematics is a key tool in the creation and appreciation of art, music, and literature, not just science and technology. The book covers basic mathematical topics from logarithms to statistics, but the authors eschew mundane finance and probability problems. Instead, they explain how modular arithmetic helps keep online transactions safe, how logarithms justify the twelve-tone scale commonly used in music, and how transmissions by deep space probes are similar to knights serving as messengers for their traveling prince.

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