The book offers a variety of suggestions to think about what is depicted and to experiment in order to make and check your own assumptions. For many topics, no (or only few) prerequisites from school lessons are needed. It is an important concern of the book that young people find their way to mathematics and that readers whose school days are some time ago discover new things. The numerous references to internet sites and further literature help in this respect. "Solutions" to the suggestions interspersed in the individual sections can be downloaded from the Springer website.
The book was thus written for everyone who enjoys mathematics or would like to understand why the book bears this title. It is also aimed at teachers who want to give their students additional or new motivation to learn.
This book is a translation of the original German 2nd edition Mathematik ist schön by Heinz Klaus Strick, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). In the subsequent editing, the author, with the friendly support of John O'Connor, St Andrews University, Scotland, tried to make it closer to a conventional translation. Still, the book may read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.
Comments on the 1st edition
The book is particularly suitable for teachers who want to give themselves and their students a motivational boost outside the classroom. The book is also aimed at those thirsty for beauty, whose school days go back many years.
Michael Lange, in: Teaching Mathematics
The author
Heinz Klaus Strick studied mathematics and physics atthe University of Cologne. For 37 years he was a teacher at a grammar school in Leverkusen, and for the last 21 years he was also headmaster of the school. He explains why mathematics is beautiful through his didactic essays, textbooks, lectures and teaching assignments at various universities and, last but not least, through his mathematics calendar (www.mathematik-ist-schoen.de). For his activities he was awarded the Archimedes Prize of MNU (Association for the promotion of STEM teaching) in 2002.
