stop. start. stutter.

(Those of you reading this via RSS might have gotten it earlier in the week -- mix-up with the post scheduling, which I am trying out in hopes it will make me, you know, post more regularly if I write them ahead of time all at once....)

So I'm enjoying my "log everything into GoodReads account" project (except when I'm not, but, well) -- but I'm only logging in new books (or books I reread since I started keeping track). So let's do books about cool topics that you don't learn about in high school. (Or at least, that I didn't learn about in my high school; your mileage may vary.) And to force myself to get into patterns and habits, I shall do them on Fridays.

Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.

Today: The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time by Keith Devlin.

I am one of those great tragedies; I am a lover of math (I can't call myself a mathematician) who suffers from medium-to-severe dyscalculia, which went undiagnosed the entire time I was in public education. (I thought everyone had trouble telling 42 and 24 apart. Or plus and minus. And don't get me started on phone numbers. Or division. Or greater than/less than.) I love math; I just can't do it without tears and swearing. (Concepts, fine. Abstracts, fine. Ideas, fine. Actual problems? I will shoot myself.)

This book tackles the seven Millennium Prize Problems, each of which carries a million-dollar bounty for a "solution". (Scare quotes are because some of the "problems" aren't so much equations to be solved as "dude, this works, but we don't know why it works.") Devlin does a great job of explaining what the problem is for all but the last two, which honestly can't be explained to a layperson (at least not without interpretive dance), but the best part of the book is the background grounding he provides for the mathematical leaps-of-glee he's about to get into.

I've had people try to Explain Math Shit to me before, and they have about a seventy percent chance of causing me to have a screaming nuclear meltdown, because they do it in the wrong way. But Devlin's good at it -- informative without being patronizing or condescending, the way so many specialists can be when they're talking about their specialty to a layperson. Devlin's not interested in proving that he knows what he's talking about; he wants you to see why Hey, Math Is Fucking Cool. And, you know, since math is fucking cool, it's a win/win situation.