Show HN: Exploring Mathematics with Python

(psu.ac.th)

107 points | by Andrew2565 5 days ago

6 comments

  • Andrew2565 11 minutes ago
    Joint author here.

    I plan to upload the entire book as a single PDF when I finish the next chapter (on the cycloid). That will probably be early next week.

    I used the original book by Arthur Engel for many years. He was an inspirational teacher.

    The MAA tried very hard to publish the book, but I kept adding new material, and a text consisting of math 'selections' rather than a single theme is a hard sell in today's publishing environment.

  • zkmon 45 minutes ago
    It is painful to imagine how these fantastic works will be not be read by humans in future, as AI would digest all this and provide just-in-time code for humans.
    • T-A 3 minutes ago
      The kind of people who read books like this will keep reading them no matter what AI does. The kind of people who won't are already using code written and packaged as convenient libraries by others.
  • efavdb 4 hours ago
    Looks like a treasure trove of knowledge.

    I just recently went to the exploratorium in SF and saw an exhibit there suggesting that the catenary made a good arch, so browsed that chapter and saw a bit of explanation here which helped. Was also interested to see that Jefferson played some part in the history here.

  • urutom 3 hours ago
    I own the original Exploring Mathematics with Your Computer(Turbo Pascal version). It’s an excellent introduction to algorithms for people coming from a mathematics background. Really happy to see it revived in Python.
  • rramadass 3 hours ago
    Very Nice!

    However, I don't see the entire book as a single pdf?

    • fnord77 2 hours ago
      I downloaded each chapter and combined them so I could read it in apple books on my ipad

          pdfunite $(ls -tr) "Exploring Mathematics with Python".pdf
  • fnord77 2 hours ago
    Very nice. I was looking for something fun to work on over the break. Thank you for this.

    > Unfortunately, after lengthy discussions with the MAA, my hopes of publishing this (rather large) expansion have proved impossible, and so I've decided to put it online, hopefully to be of use to others.

    Too bad