An Infinitely Large Napkin

Description

The Infinitely Large Napkin is a light but mostly self-contained introduction to a large amount of higher math. I should say at once that this book is not intended as a replacement for dedicated books or courses; the amount of depth is not comparable. On the flip side, the benefit of this “light” approach is that it becomes accessible to a larger audience, since the goal is merely to give the reader a feeling for any particular topic rather than to emulate a full semester of lectures. I initially wrote this book with talented high-school students in mind, particularly those with math-olympiad type backgrounds. Some remnants of that cultural bias can still be felt throughout the book, particularly in assorted challenge problems which are taken from mathematical competitions. However, in general I think this would be a good reference for anyone with some amount of mathematical maturity and curiosity. Examples include but certainly not limited to: math undergraduate majors, physics/CS majors, math PhD students who want to hear a little bit about fields other than their own, advanced high schoolers who like math but not math contests, and unusually intelligent kittens fluent in English.