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Who Is Fourier? A Mathematical Adventure

Transnational College of LEX

3 readers recommend it across 2 discussions

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Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.

ljw1001
I would second the recommendation for Who is Fourier? A Mathematical Adventure. It's an unusual and engaging introduction to waves, Fourier coefficients, and transforms. The slope is gentle but not dumbed down. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2n... (https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2nd/dp/0964350432#:~:text=In%20Who%20is%20Fourier%3F,exponentiation%2C%20differentiation%2C%20and%20integration).
rramadass
Some of the books that you mention seem a bit too hard for a teen, so you have to be careful not to demotivate them by expecting too much of them; instead i suggest a simpler approach before tackling the big ones; * Functions and Graphs by Gelfand et al. - A small but great book to develop intuition. * Who is Fourier? A Mathematical Adventure - A great "manga type" book to build important concepts from first principles * Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart - A nice overview in simple language. * Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by Kolmogorov et al. - A broad but concise presentation of a lot of mathematics. * Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics by Richard Hamming - A very good applied maths book. All of Hamming's books are recommended. There are of course plenty more but the above should be good for understanding.
sriram_malhar
My recommendation below is not the equivalent of a Feynman's series for math, but one that is pegged much lower, for someone interested in basic remedial math. It is called "Who is Fourier: A Mathematical Adventure". I was tremendously surprised by this unusual gem of a book. It covers the range from basic arithmetic to logarithms, trigonometry, calculus to fourier series. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2n... (https://www.amazon.com/Who-Fourier-Mathematical-Adventure-2nd/dp/0964350432)