Customer Reviews

Mathematical Writing (Mathematical Association of America Notes)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is based on lecture notes of a course for Stanford CS students. The lecture notes aren't very polished, but the chatty tone makes good reading. The book is incredibly funny, but some people may not like that.

Guest lecturers include outstanding people like Leslie Lamport and Paul Halmos. The content is excellent, especially the parts about writing proofs. Some parts are of more interest to computer scientists, but most of it is valuable to anyone engaged in mathematical writing.

Despite all the good things, this book doesn't really stand alone and should be complemented with other books, like the one by Krantz.

P.S.: A almost complete TEX version of the book can be found on the web.

These are "lecture notes" from a course taught by Knuth. The first third of this pamphlet is extremely useful and should be read by all researchers who are beginning to write technical papers. The remainder of the pamphlet is more spotty in quality and is marred by some needless digressions and ocassional obsession with minutae. In other words, it violates its own advice: it is not concise and to-the-point.

All in all, a useful resource. It is never boring, and as a bonus provides a good idea of Knuth's teaching---which I have never witnessed first hand.

Heartily Recommend. Sure, a TeX version may be freely available. However, if you aren't a starving student. Why not help out the MAA and Don Knuth. It isn't as expensive a Hardbound TeX (Five in the Series) are, after all.