# Good book about Mathematics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-book-about-mathematics/210967>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 2, 2003, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-book-about-mathematics/210967 "2003-11-02T06:25:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2003, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-book-about-mathematics/210967/41 "2003-11-07T04:28:20Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by ftg \*  
> **Chronos: You meant “polynomial”, not “quadratic”. It is one of the niceties of nature that it is rarely perverse. An unusual exponent (forget size, what if it’s 5.7316?) for SAT isn’t going to happen. Once a polynomial bound, any exponent, is found, people quickly find better ones. Take Network Flow. The first algorithms had fairly ugly bounds. They kept getting better. Very simple, small bounds now. That’s the way these things go. A similar specious argument along these lines are also made against the use of Big Oh.**

Assuming, of course, that SAT isn’t [symbol]w/symbol. And there are problems which do have that property–that’s a basic result taught in introductory graduate classes, so you’re no doubt familiar with it.

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> [@](#):
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> One thing to keep in mind in these CS vs. Math issues is the politics. For the last 3 decades, CS has grown tremendously while Math has shrunk. The Math dept. at a place I had once worked at actually had it’s grad program shut down since they just weren’t getting any students or funding. Tenured faculty lost jobs. So politics gets thrown into all this.\*\*

Ah. This is what I thought might be a disconnect. You’re talking about the math department vs. the CS department, and we’re talking about the discipline of math vs. the discipline of CS.

Now, I won’t deny that math and computer science are separate fields. Anyone can see that. But what I claim is that the theory of computability is a mathematical theory, and as such, it is a branch of mathematics. It deals with computations, so it is also a branch of computer science. Do you disagree with that?

And one of the millennial problems is a physics problem. Why has no one come to correct that?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-book-about-mathematics/210967/42 "2003-11-07T04:30:36Z")

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> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Gyan9 \*  
> \*\*So, who’s best equipped to solve the P vs. NP problem? A comp-scientist or mathematician? \*\*

Whoever solves it will, in my view, be acting as a mathematician, no matter what their actual job is. For the reasons **ftg** mentions, it will probably be a computer scientist.

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