[digital55]

Terence Tao: Just a brief announcement that I have been working with Quanta Books to publish a short book in popular mathematics entitled “Six Math Essentials“, which will cover six of the fundamental concepts in mathematics.

[alok-g]

From the brief description, this sounds to be quite basic. Looking forward to hearing if Terence has treated the explanations differently. :-)

[ngcc_hk]

Basic … that kind of word give me nightmare in my mind when you talked about maths … still remember a book called “elementary set theory” …

[esafak]

My favorite example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Number_Theory

[vmilner]

"The title is the same as that of a very well-known book by Professor L. E. Dickson (with which ours has little in common). We proposed at one time to change it to 'An introduction to arithmetic', a more novel and in some ways a more appropriate title; but it was pointed out that this might lead to misunderstandings about the content of the book."

            G.H. Hardy and E. M. Wright "An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers"

[kleiba]

"The word `basic’ in the title is closer in meaning to `foundational’ rather than `elementary’ [...]" (quoted from that same wikipedia page).

[raegis]

The one math majors joke about is Serra’s A Course in Arithmetic, which is definitely not for young children.

[ecshafer]

I remember a joke along the lines of "elementary" meaning that someone somewhere has solved it before.

[taneq]

"Any question in maths is either unsolved or obvious."

[hirvi74]

> this sounds to be quite basic.

It should be according to Tao's own comment at the bottom of the blog:

"This book is for a general audience, without necessarily having a college-level math education. It is aimed more at adults than at children, but some children with an interest in mathematics may be able to get something of it."

[travisjungroth]

I just really liked that question and response.