Mathematics Weblog

How To Write Mathematics Badly 2

Tuesday 27 February 2007 at 12:30 pm | In Articles | Post Comment

In the previous post I linked to a video lecture by Jean-Pierre Sierre on writing mathematics. However I should also have linked to a series of lectures on Mathematical Writing by Donald Knuth and others given nearly 20 years ago in the Autumn of 1987 at Stanford University. To quote from Don Knuth: Musings and More “I also gave a class called Mathematical Writing, just for one quarter,” says Knuth. “The lectures are still of special interest because they feature quite a few important guest lecturers.” This collection contains thirty-one tapes. If you haven’t got the time to sit through all the videos you can download a transcript of the course (or buy the book) in plain TeX format on Donald Knuth’s site: Mathematical Writing

On a slightly different tack there are a couple of papers on mathematical research that would be useful to postgraduate students:

• Advice to the beginner by Alain Connes
• What is good mathematics? by Terence Tao Some personal thoughts and opinions on what “good quality mathematics” is, and whether one should try to define this term rigorously. As a case study, the story of Szemerédi’s theorem is presented.

I’d be very interested if there are any more online resources on mathematical writing or beginning research.

Thanks to Noncommutative Geometry for the links to the two papers above.

PS Gooseania has mentioned that Nick Higham’s Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences is good.
eon mentions Some Hints on Mathematical Style by David Goss which has been recently updated with suggestions by Jean-Pierre Serre. It contains a number of references to other papers and books on writing style.