When I was 13 my mother gave me a copy of Hall & Knight "Higher Algebra" (which she later took back :-( ) --- I see someone else recommended it too. At the same time a neighbor gave me Melzack's "Companion to Concrete Mathematics" [am I getting the title right?]. I really enjoyed both of them. Knuth, Graham, & Patashnik's "Concrete Mathematics" didn't exist when I was a kid, but I know I would have loved it. At a slightly younger age I loved the MAA series of math books (I'm not sure what they're called these days) including [I am pulling these titles out of memory, but I can completely picture these paperback books;] "The uses of Infinity", "Groups and their graphs", "What is Calculus about?", and "Intro to Topology". (There were plenty of others in the series, but I am not recalling them exactly.) Probably too young for your friend, though. In high school I got two number theory texts as a gift (Niven & Zuckerman, and a book by Dickson) --- I don't think the specific books are critical, any number theory text is going to seem recreational to a kid who likes math but has not yet seen a formal treatment of number theory. Hardy "A mathematician's Apology" isn't exactly recreational math, but was definitely enjoyable to read. In a similar vein, there was Nagel & Newman's "Godel's Proof" --- and by now there are many more recent popular books on the Incompleteness Theorem and other mathematical theorems (Wiles' proof of Fermat's Theorem, the Reimann Hypothesis, ...) I see that someone recommended Raymond Smullyan --- his logic puzzles are loads of fun, but I think they're probably aimed at a slightly younger crowd. ----- Message from mlb@well.com --------- Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:45:50 -0800 From: Marc LeBrun <mlb@well.com> Reply-To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] Suggestions requested for a recreational math book for a bright 15-year-old To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com>
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> All suggestions and opinions welcome.
Raymond Smullyan
Lewis Carrol
Rudy Rucker
And, perhaps, "The Book of Numbers" by Conway & Guy.
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