 | Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos
Buy new: $9.80 / Used from: $2.97 Why ignorance of basic math is nothing to be proud of.
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 | A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by Paul Lockhart
Buy new: $9.32 / Used from: $6.34 Why so many of us end up innumerant to begin with.
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 | The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible by Keith Devlin
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $8.80 A good introduction about math for the nonmathematician.
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 | The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved And Why Numbers Are Like Gossip by Keith Devlin
Buy new: $13.26 / Used from: $1.22 Why you may be better at math than you think.
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 | Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being by George Lakoff
Buy new: $18.44 / Used from: $8.91 Mathematics is thought by some to exist "out there" independently from us. This book shows we invented it. It also debunks what the authors call the Romance of math, that math is a subject that only a few special people can learn. Math can be a hard subject, but anyone can learn it.
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 | The Kingdom of Infinite Number: A Field Guide by Bryan Bunch
Buy used from: $0.17 The interesting properties of numbers presented in a concrete, field guide format.
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 | Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson
Buy new: $16.31 / Used from: $11.95 Calculus is a nonintuitive subject that most people don't understand at first. Most textbooks are padded with complexity that adds to the confusion. This cuts to the basics.
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 | Calculus for Cats by Kenn Amdahl
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $6.14 I wish I had this during my calculus classes. It explains the basic concepts in non-mathematical terms. There are no exercises, since your textbook will give you plenty.
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 | The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz
Buy new: $52.69 / Used from: $50.00 A how-to guide on tackling higher math problems of all sorts.
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 | How to Solve Mathematical Problems by Wayne A. Wickelgren
Buy new: $10.10 / Used from: $3.00 A how-to guide for a much more reasonable price.
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 | Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg
Buy new: $31.50 / Used from: $13.75 An extremely comprehensive introduction to a variety of branches of mathematics.
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 | What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods by Richard Courant
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $11.25 A classic. The first printing in 1941 earned praise from Albert Einstein.
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 | How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
Buy new: $8.37 / Used from: $3.85 Another classic. How the statistics you see most often are used and abused.
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 | How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics by William Byers
Buy new: $28.63 / Used from: $17.70 To many people, math is methodical, stodgy logic. There's a very creative side that you never see in your school math classes, unfortunately.
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 | The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking (Key Curriculum Press) by Edward B. Burger
Buy new: $133.75 / Used from: $30.00 This book shows how math is more than just dry formulas, but a way of thinking and looking at things, and even, gasp! fun. Since this is an expensive textbook, buy it used.
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