The readings for each session are designed to be read after attending that session. For a listing of the topics discussed in each session, see here: (PDF)
Published Textbook
Mahajan, Sanjoy. Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780262514293.
The book is available as a free download (PDF) from MIT Press.
Textbook (Earlier Edition)
An earlier version of the textbook as one file may be found here: (PDF - 1.3 MB)
Title page and table of contents (PDF)
References (PDF)
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dimensions |
Chapter 1 - Dimensions, pp. 3-12 (PDF) Questions from lecture 1 (PDF) |
| 2 | Extreme cases |
Chapter 2 - Extreme cases, pp. 13-26 (PDF) Questions and answers from lecture 2 (PDF) |
| 3 | Application: drag |
Chapter 2 - Extreme cases, pp. 26-30 (PDF) Questions from lecture 3 (PDF) |
| 4 | More on drag | |
| 5 | Discretization | Chapter 3 - Discretization, pp. 31-40 (PDF) |
| 6 | Application: pendulum period | Chapter 3 - Discretization, pp. 41-44 (PDF) |
| 7 | Picture proofs | Chapter 4 - Picture proofs, pp. 45-56 (PDF) |
| 8 | Taking out the big part | Chapter 5 - Taking out the big part, pp. 57-79 (PDF) |
| 9 | Analogy | Chapter 6 - Analogy, pp. 80-85 (PDF) |
| 10 | Application: operators | Chapter 7 - Operators, pp. 86-90 (PDF) |
| 11 | Application: singing logarithms | Handout - approximating logarithms using musical intervals (PDF) |
