One of the World's Most Influential Math Texts is Getting a Beautiful, Minimalist Edition (theverge.com) 81
An anonymous reader shares a report: A couple of years ago, a small publisher called Kroncker Wallis issued a handsome, minimalist take on Isaac Newton's Principia. Now, the publisher is embarking on its next project: Euclid's Elements. The publisher is
using Kickstarter to fund this new edition. Euclid's Elements is a mathematical text written by Greek mathematician Euclid around 300 BCE and has been called one of the most influential textbooks ever produced. The treatise contains 13 separate books, covering everything from plane geometry, the Pythagorean theorem, golden ratio, prime numbers, and quite a bit more. The books helped to influence scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Sir Isaac Newton. In 1847, an English mathematician named Oliver Byrne re-wrote the first six books of Euclid's Elements, taking its concepts and illustrating them.
Is "The C Programming Language" next? (Score:1)
Is a minimalist edition of "The C Programming Language" going to be next?
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attacking people for things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand is just tiring in todays world
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You enjoy getting "help" from someone who thinks you're an idiot?
It's true, you'd have to be an idiot to ask for help with improving your reading comprehension on /.. Fortunately most people grasp the notion of context in discourse.
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checkmate, creimer
???
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"sweet tits" is your go-to phrase to defending yourself as an AC.
I don't think "sweet tits" is defending me, but she is mocking you! Yes, "sweet tits" is a she. ;)
You should use your Slashdot scraper to confirm it!
My scraper script works on user accounts. It doesn't work for ACs.
News for nerds (Score:2)
You will be able to buy a new 2300 year old dead tree book.
Soon.
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Pretty sure they don't print books on papyrus these days. Who knows what these Kickstarter hipsters are doing, though.
Should be awesome (Score:5, Informative)
I have an edition of Byrne's first six books - it is beautiful, and given his approach, quite useful.
Can't wait for somebody to finish his work, esp. the illustrated version of the irrationality of the square root of 2.
Is it time to upgrade ? (Score:1)
Taschen did a beautiful edition of Euclid's Elements a couple of years ago based on Byrne's english edition.
The only downside was that the book included only the first 6 books of the Elements.
The paper used was very high quality, the illustrations poped out of the page and Taschen didn't skimp on using nice black ink (among other colors). Even the price was correct.
For 180$ this new edition on kickstarter has to blow the Taschen one out of the water, and I don't think it will be able to do it.
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I agree: Taschen did a great job on Byrne's book. But Taschen did so on a book that was already written, and long out of copyright.
This new book is yet to be written, and, having done a few books myself priced in this range, I know that this price is not exorbitant.
Finally, as a corollary to the above, this book does not compete with anything Taschen has done, so it need not blow the earlier work out of the water. It simply needs to be good on its own terms.
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I don't know vat I can say about that.
It's not for me... but maybe others like it (Score:2)
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Me too. I like the idea, but hate the aesthetics. This is a very ugly book. Also, I don't want a gigantic textbook. I'm not going to take out a textbook and plop it on my table like a student. I'm done with that.
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My guess would be the amount of text on a page. While your critique is somewhat harsh I would agree with the main point that: "it looks like one of those websites made for tablets printed on paper." The concept reminds me of opera productions set in (typically more modern) eras different than when the libretto was written for. If you're going to go trendy then change the text to suit the presentation, somewhat how Hamilton updated the Chernow text.
Okay, I'll bite (Score:4, Funny)
What does BCE mean? Is it the Canadian version of BC?
Before Christ, Eh?
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The BCE above stands for "Before Current Era".
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Political correctness has decreed we not use BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) but BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) for dates.
I don't know who we don't have to offend anymore. Maybe the Aliens ?
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Overly exuberant historians have, in the past, shown a proclivity towards imprecision and imagination in their findings and measurements. "CE" is used simply to indicate that you take the scientific process seriously, while "AD" will be used by those who peddle counterfeit Shrouds of Turin. The terminology is not Politically Correct (TM), quite the contrary. It's inflammatory; deliberately offensive, even. It's a line in the sand declaring that Christian hoodoo has no (further) place in scientific journals.
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"CE" is used simply to indicate that you take the scientific process seriously, while "AD" will be used by those who peddle counterfeit Shrouds of Turin.
Bull. The users of "CE" are a smug bunch that haven't noticed the rest of us have moved on. "CE" usage is dead. Even the Discovery Channel has given up on using "CE" as a PC term and gone back to simple BC and AD which have been used for the past 2000 years. Using BCE and CE is about as laughable as using the Gregorian calendar and Julian dates. I'm tired of pandering to that group of pedantic "scholars".
-=-=-
Re:Okay, I'll bite (Score:5, Informative)
It's been the scholarly habit for decades and has nothing to do with Political Correctness, it's simply and incorrect and religiously charged term. It's not even the right year for Jesus' birth.
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Getting a large chunk of humanity under a common calendar was a huge historical event, regardless of the reasoning used in selecting the first date. Prior to that there were literally hundreds of local time dating systems which to this day make accurate dating of events before than time extremely difficult.
scholary habit? (Score:2)
Theres a similar issue in German: v.Chr. (vor Christus = BC) and n.Chr. (nach Christus = AD). However, the only "scholars" who used v.u.Z. and n.u.Z. (vor / nach unserer Zeitrechnung) were the communists in the former GDR.
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Well, there's political correctness. But there's also uncertainty as to the exact dates for Jesus of Nazareth's life... assuming he existed.
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BCE means before common age.
No idea why _americans_ invented that term when we simply can say 'before christ' and 'after christ' like the rest of the world does,
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era, mot age.
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Is this really necessary? - already available (Score:1)
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But this one uses Kickstarter, the business equivalent of 3D printing.
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What they're doing is not available. They will use the graphical notation throughout, and that has thus far been done only for the first 6 books, not all 13.
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This is not a reprint, nor even a re-layout. The work involves re-notation of books 7-13, and re-drawing of diagrammatic notation in books 1-6. It's a lot of work, it'll be a completely new, unique edition not merely in its aesthetics.
thanks for the advertisement, Slashdot (Score:2)
Why the boot licking? (Score:2)