Nonstandard Notebook - by Tim Chartier & Amy Langville (Paperback)

About the Book

"Our civilization has the odd habit of printing books full of lines. We call these notebooks "ruled". It's an orderly, lawful word, as befits an orderly, lawful document. Of course, in a ruled notebook, the rules are there to invite writing, drawing, and thinking. The rules are riverbanks, and the river flowing between them is whatever you want it to be. How might changing the lines change the flow of thoughts between them? What if the straight parallels gave way to curves, clusters, and criss-crosses? What if the once-identical pages began to individuate and develop personalities? What ideas might come to life, if the rules grew unruly? Mathematics, liked line notebooks, does not enjoy a reputation for playful spontaneity. If you want to create an unruly notebook for nonstandard thoughts, it might seem that algebra is the last place you'd turn. But creativity is not (as we sometimes imagine) a matter of shaking off all constraints. It is about playing against them. We need rules, if only for the sake of breaking them. Plotted, written, and overruled by mathematicians, educators, and popularizers Tim Chartier and Amy Langville, and with a foreword by Ben Orlin, this book reveals math's creative side. We will see how straight lines can form fractal crenelations; how circles can disrupt and unify; how waves can create complex landscapes and famous faces. The rules of mathematics, this book shows, are like the rules of a notebook: invitations to play"--

Book Synopsis

A revolutionary notebook that challenges us to play outside (and with) the lines.

A standard notebook displays page after page of horizontal lines. But what if we break the pattern? What if the ruled pages grew unruly? In this Nonstandard Notebook, lines twist, fragment, curve, and crisscross in beautiful formations. Each sheet is a distinctive work of imagination, asking us to draw, doodle, and journal in the same spirit.

Page after page, as we journey from lines to parabolas to waves, deep questions arise--about form, art, and mathematics. How do we harness the infinite? Why do patterns permeate nature? What are the limitations and possibilities of human vision? Nonstandard Notebook explores these questions and more through its provocative and inspirational images, each displayed with the mathematics that generated it. We see how straight lines can form fractal crenellations, how circles can disrupt and unify, and how waves and scaling can form complex landscapes (or even famous faces). Created by mathematicians, educators, and math popularizers Tim Chartier and Amy Langville, and with a foreword from Ben Orlin (bestselling author of Math with Bad Drawings), Nonstandard Notebook shows that rules--both the rules of mathematics and the rules of a notebook--do not mark the end of creativity, but the beginning.

Review Quotes

"Though mathematics is often taught as a collection of regulations, that is not the spirit of the enterprise. By giving us a (mostly) empty notebook in which to record our imaginings, the authors spur us on with imaginative spaces to contain our thoughts. . . . The playful nature of [this book] is a reminder that mathematics, though deep and powerful, is also just plain fun."-- "The Mathematical Intelligencer"

"Writing in a notebook, we are taught to follow the rules--to let the faint parallel lines guide the pen across the page. But what if the rules begin to tilt or curl, converge or diverge, twist themselves into loops or spirals? This is the unsettling premise of Chartier and Langville's Nonstandard Notebook: Mathematically Ruled Pages for Unruly Thoughts. . . . The notebook is handsome and well-made. The size (half of a letter sheet) is convenient for those who want to take notes in class or keep a journal. However, I do wonder how many owners of the Nonstandard Notebook will find the unruly rules too intriguing to scribble over."-- "American Scientist (Annual Gift Guide)"

"I love the Nonstandard Notebook! Is it meditation or math? Both, really, and the result is pretty close to enlightenment."--Larry Gonick, New York Times-best-selling author of "The Cartoon Guide to Geometry"

"What matters most is the space left blank. All the mathematics, all the artistry--it's only there as fodder for your imagination. . . . The pencil is yours."--Ben Orlin, best-selling author of "Math with Bad Drawings," from the foreword

"This is what every math book should be--an invitation to creativity and interaction. It makes my mathematical heart leap with joy. I need to buy many copies so that I can keep one copy to stare at but have several to use as actual notebooks in different ways, not to mention give them to everyone I know."--Eugenia Cheng, author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning "Is Math Real?"

"This project reveals how joy and wonder can be both subtle and profound. The simple daily delight of writing, yet with new structure, might make you think about things you never thought before. In this notebook-artbook, Chartier and Langville take us on a surprising tour of the graceful glory and the provocative possibilities of lines! Backgrounds, when gently foregrounded, help us see life and humanness in the mathematics of simple things. As I beheld each page, all I kept thinking was how much fun it would be to scribe my thoughts here! What new contemplations might it inspire?"--Francis Su, author of "Mathematics for Human Flourishing"

About the Author

Tim Chartier is the Joseph R. Morton Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Davidson College. His books include Math Bytes: Google Bombs, Chocolate-Covered Pi, and Other Cool Bits in Computing and Get in the Game: An Interactive Introduction to Sports Analytics, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press. Amy Langville is professor of mathematics at the College of Charleston. Her books include Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings, Who's #1: The Science of Rating and Ranking, and the Deconstruct Calculus Series. She is also a frequent consultant on applied mathematics projects.