Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Euclid's Elements makeover

The classic geometry book Elements is having a new design:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90282910/a-masterpiece-of-ancient-data-viz-reinvented-as-a-gorgeous-website.

I think that's pretty cool. If you care to look around the math/science section of bookstores.. you see there are MANY pretty books covering the chemistry elements, astronomy and other sciences. Now many of them will end up in the discount bin and well educated people who find them interesting are so few. It is sad American cultures that most people are just interested in sports.

Much of math's more advanced things are super difficult to read, loaded with hard-to-understand notations and endless list of definitions, theorems, etc. Even fewer people can ever understand or have slight interest in those... well, many of the advanced topics aren't about pictures so hard to give them graphical good look. Well Euclid's work has some unique elements of course: pictures... so a graphical makeover will make it more attractive to readers of today.

Elements is such influential scientific work.

The Elements included this fascinating proof: that there are infinitely many prime numbers. (and I can only understand his proof. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_theorem).

However, even with a graphical makeover, the Elements' original form is probably too hard for most to understand for most... But this is a classic to be appreciated. Everyone should at least heard of it. It is the 2nd all time best seller, only second to the Bible.

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