Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical DiversionsAn Award-Winning Essayist Plies His Craft Brian Hayes is one of the most accomplished essayists active today--a claim supported not only by his prolific and continuing high-quality output but also by such honors as the National Magazine Award for his commemorative Y2K essay titled "Clock of Ages," published in the November/December 1999 issue of The Sciences magazine. (The also-rans that year included Tom Wolfe, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Oliver Sacks.) Hayes's work in this genre has also appeared in such anthologies as The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Norton Reader. Here he offers us a selection of his most memorable and accessible pieces--including "Clock of Ages"--embellishing them with an overall, scene-setting preface, reconfigured illustrations, and a refreshingly self-critical "Afterthoughts" section appended to each essay. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - hcubic - LibraryThingI am an enthusiastic fan of Brian Hayes' "Computing Science" column in the Sigma Xi publication, American Scientist, which is the source of most of the essays in this book. Before that, I read his ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - tyroeternal - LibraryThingMy reading from essay to essay varied from rapt attention to indifferent skimming. Mathematical writing is not a genre I would ever have thought I would jump on, but a few of Hayes' articles ... Read full review
Contents
Clock of Ages | 3 |
Random Resources | 23 |
Follow the Money | 41 |
Inventing the Genetic Code | 65 |
Statistics of Deadly Quarrels | 89 |
Dividing the Continent | 107 |
On the Teeth of Wheels | 125 |
The Easiest Hard Problem | 143 |
Other editions - View all
Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions Brian Hayes No preview available - 2009 |
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions |
| Author | Brian Hayes |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Macmillan, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0809052199, 9780809052196 |
| Length | 269 pages |
| Subjects | › › Science / Essays Science / Physics / Mathematical & Computational |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |