"Oxford Companion to Mathematics" or equivalent - worth it?

Eliot Rosewater

I was browsing Amazon.co.uk the other day when I found this book: Oxford Users' Guide to Mathematics.

From what I gather it's a catch-all reference text containing formulas and tables from a wide area of maths. I often find myself looking for log tables, or old Leaving Cert information booklets, so I wonder would such a book be a good one to have on the shelf? The contents list looks pretty good!

Does anyone have any experience with these kind of books?

LeixlipRed

Does the net not make this sort of thing irrelevant nowadays?

Fremen

I'd say you're better off going with Abramowitz and Stegun and a copy of the Princeton Companion, with wikipedia and/or library textbooks to fill in the details.

Eliot Rosewater

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Does the net not make this sort of thing irrelevant nowadays?

I hate using the Internet for reference! I spend enough time in front of computers already, and I like to keep it to a minimum.

Fremen wrote: »

I'd say you're better off going with Abramowitz and Stegun and a copy of the Princeton Companion, with wikipedia and/or library textbooks to fill in the details.

Thanks for the recommendations Fremen. Both of those books are in the UCC Library, so I'll have a look on Tuesday.

The only thing I'll say though, the Princeton Companion looks like it covers more advanced topics rather than the basics. I was attracted to the Oxford Users' Guide to Mathematics because it looks like it covers all the basics.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

LeixlipRed

I haven't got a copy but I have glimpsed one. The sort of book you could beat a man to death with

Eliot Rosewater

Hmmm ... could be handy for getting the Arts students out of the Maths building then.

Enkidu

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

The only thing I'll say though, the Princeton Companion looks like it covers more advanced topics rather than the basics. I was attracted to the Oxford Users' Guide to Mathematics because it looks like it covers all the basics.

If you plan to continue in mathematics the Princeton Companion is far more useful. Every single article on the major areas is an ideal read before reading a book on the subject, e.g. the algebraic geometry article.

Eliot Rosewater

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is great! Wasn't what what I was looking for in this thread, but I'm definitely going to invest in a copy! It will be instructive for future explorations.

The Abramowitz and Stegun is overkill for my needs, if I'm to be honest. If I bought it I'd only use about 5% of it I'd say. So I think I'll just type up frequently used formula in Latex.