The Beauty of Doing Mathematics: Three Public Dialogues [Paperback]

Serge Lang (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (September 4, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387961496
• ISBN-13: 978-0387961491
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,324,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not great..., March 5, 2001

By 

true1987 "zein" (Athens, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beauty of Doing Mathematics: Three Public Dialogues (Paperback)

This is another book from the famous Yale math professor, Serge Lang. However, this isn't a textbook - it's a collection of 3 dialogues Lang gave in Paris in the 80s.

Certainly the discussions are very interesting. The interactions between Lang and the audience, comprimising mostly 'ordinary' people but also high-school and college students, set this book apart from a textbook. Lang does a fairly good job at covering the material (relating to primes, Diophantine equations, and a bit of geometry/topology) and explaining it to the non-mathematically-inclined. Of course, with this come problems - Lang only skims over the material and much of what he says is not supported by proof.

If you would like an interesting read, I would recommend this book. However, if you would actually like to learn something about Goldbach's conjecture or elliptic curves, (first and second dialogues, respectively) a textbook or book dedicated to the subject is a much better source. To compare it to an everyday situation: if you had a conversation with friends, and taped and transcribed it - reading it certainly may be interesting, but not very informative.

However, if you like material like this - I suggest you also search for "Martin Gardner" here on amazon.com; he's an excellent author for those not deeply involved with math (and even those who are).