The year's finest mathematical writing from around the worldThis annual anthology brings together the year's finest mathematics writing from around the world--and you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy the pieces collected here. These essays--from leading names and fresh new voices--delve into the history, philosophy, teaching, and everyday aspects of math, offering surprising insights into its nature, meaning, and practice, and taking readers behind the scenes of today's hottest mathematical debates.Here, Viktor Blåsjö gives a brief history of "lockdown mathematics"; Yelda Nasifoglu decodes the politics of a seventeenth-century play in which the characters are geometric shapes; and Andrew Lewis-Pye explains the basic algorithmic rules and computational procedures behind cryptocurrencies. In other essays, Terence Tao candidly recalls the adventures and misadventures of growing up to become a leading mathematician; Natalie Wolchover shows how old math gives new clues about whether time really flows; and David Hand discusses the problem of "dark data"--information that is missing or ignored. And there is much, much more.

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction
• Lockdown Mathematics: A Historical Perspective
• Cryptocurrencies: Protocols for Consensus
• Logical Accidents and the Problem of the Inside Corner
• Cosmatesque Design and Complex Analysis
• Nullstellenfont
• Hyperbolic Flowers
• Embodied Geometry in Early Modern Theatre
• Modeling Dynamical Systems for 3D Printing
• Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology
• Bouncing Balls and Quantum Computing
• Landmark Computer Science Proof Cascades through Physics and Math
• Dark Data
• Analysis in an Imperfect World
• A Headache-Causing Problem
• A Zeroth Power Is Often a Logarithm Yearning to Be Free
• The Bicycle Paradox
• Tricolor Pyramids
• Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come from a Century-Old Approach to Math
• The Role of History in the Study of Mathematics
• “All of These Political Questions”: Anticommunism, Racism, and the Origin of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society
• Reasoning as a Mathematical Habit of Mind
• Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics—How Are We Doing? Roger Howe
• Tips for Undergraduate Research Supervisors
• Color Insert
• “The Infinite Is the Chasm in Which Our Thoughts Are Lost”: Reflections on Sophie Germain’s Essays
• Who Owns the Theorem?
• A Close Call: How a Near Failure Propelled Me to Succeed
• Contributors
• Notable Writings
• Acknowledgments
• Credits