mathematics

Love and Math

Love and Math is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Love and Math rather than just read about it. In short: Love and Math is a book about mathematics written by Edward Frenkel which was published in October 2013. It was a New York Times bestseller, and was the 2015 winner of the Euler Book Prize.

Key takeaways

Love and Math belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Love and Math to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Love and Math from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Love and Math is a book about mathematics written by Edward Frenkel which was published in October 2013. It was a New York Times bestseller, and was the 2015 winner of the Euler Book Prize. As of February 2016, it has been published in 16 languages.

Reception In a review published in The New York Review of Books, Jim Holt called Love and Math a "winsome new memoir" which is "three things: a Platonic love letter to mathematics; an attempt to give the layman some idea of its most magnificent drama-in-progress; and an autobiographical account, by turns inspiring and droll, of how the author himself came to be a leading player in that drama.” The New York Times review called the book "powerful, passionate and inspiring." Keith Devlin wrote in The Huffington Post: "With every page, I found my mind's eye conjuring up a fictional image of the book's author, writing by candlelight in the depths of the Siberian winter like Omar Sharif's Doctor Zhivago in the David Lean movie adaptation of Pasternak's famous novel. Love and Math is Edward Frenkel's Lara poems... As is true for all the great Russian novels, you will find in Frenkel's tale that one person's individual story of love and overcoming adversity provides both a penetrating lens on society and a revealing mirror into the human mind." Peter Woit, author of Not Even Wrong, wrote in a blog post:

The Love of the title is much more about love of mathematics than love of another person, as Frenkel provides a detailed story of what it is like to fall in love with mathematics, then pursue this deeply, ending up doing mathematics at the highest level.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Love and Math

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Love and Math claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Love and Math before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Love and Math ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Love and Math

In research: Love and Math appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Love and Math in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Love and Math is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Books about mathematics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Love and Math outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Love and Math in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Love and Math means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Love and Math out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Love and Math in simple terms?

Love and Math is a book about mathematics written by Edward Frenkel which was published in October 2013. It was a New York Times bestseller, and was the 2015 winner of the Euler Book Prize.

Why does Love and Math matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Love and Math?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Love and Math.