A Course of Pure Mathematics

If they like calculus and can stand proofs, I’d recommend a Course of Pure Mathematics by Hardy. It totally blew my mind when I was that age, to see how everything was “connected” by proofs, starting with real numbers. Despite being proof heavy, I found the writing style singularly legible and comprehensible.

My recommendations: Hardy, A Course of Pure Mathematics. Knuth, Graham and Patashnik, Concrete Mathematics. Hoffman and Kunze, Linear Algebra (there are several free online books on Linear Algebra and Vector Spaces, Strang, Axler, Lang Halmos and Shilov are also recommended). Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications. If you're not studying for exams and you have plenty of time on your hands, try the following algorithm: 1. Dive into some random chapter in the book and attempt the first exercise in that chapter. 2. Understand the problem by referring back and learning everything that might potentially have relevance to the exercise. 3. Attempt to solve exercise. 4. If unsuccessful, go to step 2. 5. If there are more exercises in the chapter, pick the next exercise and go to step 2. 6. If there are still unsolved exercises in the book, go to step 1.…