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Calculus Of Friendship: What A Teacher And A Student Learned About Life While Corresponding About Math (2011)

by Steven H. Strogatz(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1282259148 (ISBN13: 9781282259140)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Princeton University Press

review 1: This is the story of the author's friendship with his high school calculus teacher, Don Joffray. Over the course of 30 years, they maintain a correspondence based mostly on their love of math, sharing interesting puzzles and solutions with one another. Before long, the pupil has surpassed the teacher, and their roles reverse.My husband has math friendships like the one portrayed here, and I chose this book for that aspect. I was hoping for a lot more relationship and a little less math. I could not coax my lazy brain into doing any but the simplest problems in the book, and even then, I only followed along the proofs and didn't work them out myself.The picture that emerged of "Joff," the teacher, is a beautiful one, and I fell in love with him almost immediately. His side ... moreof the correspondence is lively and colorful, and he interjects glimpses of his life outside of math. My impression of the author is a lot less flattering and soured further as the relationship evolved. I suspect that he really does care deeply for Joff in his own way, but as Strogatz himself puts it, he spends a lot of his life in his own head...and it shows.
review 2: I was privileged to edit this author's first trade book, SYNC. And I'm also in the acknowledgments for this one. So I'm biased. But I still think this is an amazing book about the lifelong friendship between a math teacher and his student. There is a ton of formulas in this book -- they were really corresponding about math. But you can also read this book and just ignore the math and get a huge amount out of it. It's a love story -- a teacher for his prize student, a student for a beloved teacher and mentor, and two men for a subject that held for them inestimable beauty and challenge: math. less

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