No.5, number 5 in a series.]
Two famous books by Polya: How to solve it and Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning.
Littlewood's miscellany, B. Bollobas, QA7 .L75.
Ian Stewart has written many good books (titles forthcoming).
Mathematical Circles (Revisited, Squared) - Howard Eves.
Fantasia Mathematica and The Mathematical Magpi - Clifton Fadiman.
Mathematical Plums, Ross Honsberger QA7 .M34447. Also Mathematical Gems (I,II,III), QA241 .H63, and Mathematical gems from elementary combinatorics, number theory, and geometry. Published and distributed by the Mathematical Association of America, 1973, (Dolciani mathematical expositions, №1), 510.8 D662.
Courant and Robbins What is Mathematics? (I believe that the paperback version has this subtitle: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods).
A wonderful article: What To Do When the Trisector Comes, Underwood Dudley, The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol.5, №1, p.20, (1983), QA1 .M38.
AUTHOR: Khinchin, Aleksandr IAkovlevich, 1894-1959. UNIFORM TITLE: Tri zhemchuzhiny teorii chisel. TITLE: Three pearls of number theory CALL NUM: 512.81 K45tEb 1952.
A Problem Seminar, QA43 .N43.
One hundred problems in elementary mathematics, H. Dorrie, Dover Publ., 510 D716tEa.
Challenging Mathematical Problems With Elementary Solutions, by Yaglom and Yaglom. IAglom, A. M., 345 Y12nE.
J.V. Uspensky has a nice book, Theory of Equations. It primarily concerns polynomials and their roots. It starts at an elementary level and has lots of elementary proofs. By the end of the book, it has gotten to symmetric polynomials. It is a good book for self-study.
You can obtain TeX/LaTeX, and read tutorials at CTAN, The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network with its Really Useful FAQ. The corresponding Usenet forum is comp.text.tex where expert help beginners. See also Engineering: Text Processing using LaTeX for many resources.
The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX (pdf) is quite good.
The Wikibook LaTeX gives an overview.
Here is an example of a LaTeX source file (.tex) [have your browser download this as a plain ASCII text file], and its output when compiled by LaTeX (pdf).
A second example of LaTeX (.tex) [download this as a plain ASCII text file], and its LaTeX-compiled output (pdf).
The Web
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Math abbreviations |
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WLOG:
Without loss of generality.
(WELOG:
Without essential loss of generality).
FTSOC: For the sake of contradiction. TFAE: The following are equivalent. ISTS: It suffices to show. OTOHand: On the other hand. wrt or w.r.t: with respect to. : . |
Posint: Positive integer, a member of {1,2,3,...}. Negint: Negative integer ; in {..., -3, -2, -1}. Natnum: Natural number, a member of {0, 1,2,3,...}. Posreal: Positive real number. Negreal: Negative real. Fnc: function. Cts: continuous; cty: continuity. Poly: polynomial. Coeff: coefficient. zip: the zero-poly; each of its coeffs is zero. Elt: element. Pt: Point. Ptn: Partition. Thm: Theorem. Lem: Lemma. Prop'n: Proposition. Coro: Corollary. CEX: Counterexample. Defn: Definition. by hyp.: by hypothesis. : . |
Please do not restate problems from the textbook; simple write a solution to the problem. In contrast, for the E-problems (the spur-of-the-moment Extra problems that I make up) that you hand in, start by carefully stating the complete problem.
For serious end-of-semester extenuating circumstances, the proverbial Math Dept. Policy on Incomplete Grades, possibly comes into play.
(For genuine complaints, please come speak with me; I will do my level best to accommodate you. Conversely, if you are in the mood for jocular complaints…)
Why not use
Scott Pakin's complaint-letter generator?
You can
automatically
generate a 2 paragraph complaint about
Prof. King
with a single click.
If you are
really
angry, three paragraphs is a snap.
(To get a new screed, just refresh the page.)
You can complain about yourself, if so inclined, but it'll likely be funnier if you fill-in the appropriate data at the complaint generator.
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