oskarhenriksson

Fun books about mathematics

A few suggestions of books that I have either read or read parts of:

• The World of Mathematics edited by J. Newman. Wonderful collection of all sorts of cool math texts, including texts from really famous mathematicians like Descartes and Russell.

• How to Bake Pi by E. Cheng. Interesting and very accessible book where math and category is compared to baking.

• The Mathematical Experience by P. David, R. Hesh and E. A. Marchisotto. Another great (and slingtly more down-to-earth) book about the nature of mathematics.

• Mathematics by T. Gowers. Short guide that tries to introduce the reader to what higher mathematics really is about.

oskarhenriksson

Fun topics for weekly math meetings

Topics to discuss

These topics can be used in different ways. One way is as a starting point or ice breaker for very informal/chill conversations that can go off in whatever direction we want, and that possibly will naturally fall apart into several smaller conversations if the group is bigger than 3-4 people. The topics can also be discussed togheter in a bigger group, in a somewhat more seminar-like format. In that case, it is important that we help each other to keep the discussion sort of on-topic, and make sure everyone gets the chance to share some of their thoughts.

Both these formats can, of course, be combined in different proportions each meeting. In general, some kind of structure probably helps to make it feel as natural as possible for new people to come by and do a lot of talking.

• Popular Math on Youtube. People could show videos from their favorite youtube channels (Vihart and 3blue1brown ftw!) on the projector and we could talk about what diff

oskarhenriksson

Feedback from the W17 LaTeX Workshop

• Would be good if we had people sit closer together, instead of spread out in the room. Somehow that usually creates a better. slightly more social atmosphere. It also makes it easier for people to help each other if someone gets stuck somewhere.

• The intial, inspirational remarks about how usefule, versatile and overall awesome LaTeX is were really good. You made LaTeX powerful great without making it sound dauntingly complcated. Maybe you could try to make this slightly more consiece. Since people have their laptops (i.e. a giant soruce of distraction) right in front of them, it's important to get started with the actual codealong as soon as possible!

• When you show displayed math, it might be good to show and example where you have text both before and after the equation, i.e. something like texttexttext $$mathmathmath$$ moretexttexttext to show people that everything after the equation (including punctuation) ends up on a new line in the compiled document.

oskarhenriksson

Popular Math on Youtube

Big Questions

• How can popular math be useful and important?
  • Showing the general public that math is valuable.
  • Making people (especially students) interested in learning math.
  • Inpsire students to persue degrees and careers in math.
  • Remind undergrads like us about how awesome math is, and why we have chosen to study it.
• Why is it not done more? (A common saying is that the content of higher math is one of the world's best kept secrets)
  • No economical incentives.
• The that rigor is super important, and the idea that popular math requires you to be extremely non-rigorous.

oskarhenriksson

Outline Suggestions for LaTeX Workshop, May 2017

• Say hi to everyone, hand out example document + beamer document
• Suggest that people start looking that the examples.
• Have people sit close to the board (to facilitate discussion).
• Introduce ourselves. Mention that this is the first intermediate workshop we host, and that advice and feedback during and after the event is most appreciated.
• Open up sharelatex, and a few resources such as google, detexify and the codecogs editor (maybe not the github repo though, because that might be distracting?).
• If a good chance to showcase one of these resources comes up under the workshop, we should take it.
• have people open a blank document.
• Quickly add the most general and essential packages (the others can wait until we need them, or maybe be ignored at all if they are only there for aesttic reasons)
• Based on people's requests go through some of the examples from Section 1.