[HN Gopher] Geometry for Entertainment (1950)
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       Geometry for Entertainment (1950)
        
       Author : the-mitr
       Score  : 86 points
       Date   : 2024-05-30 10:25 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
        
       | yantrams wrote:
       | This one is new to me. I still have my copies of Physics for
       | Entertainment and Mathematics can be fun by the same author -
       | Yakov Perelman. I owe my superfast stereogram decoding skills ( <
       | 2 seconds most of the times ) to him :)
       | 
       | Here's an interesting tidbit from his wikipedia page - He is not
       | related to the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman, who was
       | born in 1966 to a different Yakov Perelman. However, Grigori
       | Perelman told The New Yorker that his father gave him Physics for
       | Entertainment, and it inspired his interest in mathematics
        
       | notorandit wrote:
       | 1950?
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | according to https://math.ru/lib/81 , (1950) 206pp [edition of
         | 150k copies]
        
           | AlecSchueler wrote:
           | Is this the original edition? The layout is fantastic for its
           | age.
        
             | madcaptenor wrote:
             | No, this is a 2024 translation into English from Russian.
             | The original is at
             | https://archive.org/details/20220910_perelman_geometry/
        
       | anta40 wrote:
       | Ah.. I remember purchasing a Yakov Perelman's math puzzle book
       | many years ago (as a high schooler).
       | 
       | Just heard about this. Let's see...
        
       | obscurette wrote:
       | It's somehow became trend to make statements that there hasn't
       | been good physics/math/etc books in the past and that's why many
       | are so bad at these subjects. Perelman is a very good
       | counterargument to use with everyone grown up in Soviet Union.
       | His books are really legendary among 50+ people and I still have
       | all of them on my book shelf.
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | any other gems from https://archive.org/details/mir-titles ?
        
       | Rygian wrote:
       | Typo in page 281: The mnemonic in French has almost all offsets
       | wrong because it considers "j'aime" as one word instead of two.
       | If anyone feels like making a pull request, the source is at [1].
       | 
       | Correct:                 Que j'aime a faire apprendre un nombre
       | utile aux sages !       3   1 4    1 5     9         2  6      5
       | 3   5       ...
       | 
       | [1] https://gitlab.com/mirtitles/perelman-
       | geometry/-/blob/master...
        
         | iisan7 wrote:
         | Also "Jmmortel" in the following sentence (unless that J
         | character was chosen for stylistic reasons).
        
       | bigdict wrote:
       | The name of the "translator" didn't strike me as one that a
       | native speaker of either Russian or English would have.
       | 
       | Sure enough:                 I have made use of machine
       | translations for the bulk of the text, and the results are quite
       | satisfactory. At times, I have used several translation services
       | to ensure I am on the right track and that the meaning is not
       | lost in translation. Though, of course, there might be places
       | where I have not translated correctly. I learnt to read the
       | Russian in a very rudimentary way in the process.
       | 
       | Fascinating!
        
         | xanderlewis wrote:
         | _Damitr Mazanav_ doesn't (modulo some variation in
         | transliteration into Roman characters) sound Russian to you?
         | 
         | edit: looking at the introduction written by the translator,
         | he/she appears to be possibly... Indian?
         | 
         | It's weirdly close to _Dmitry Mazanov_ , though, which would
         | seemingly been a reasonable Russian name.
        
       | ccppurcell wrote:
       | The translation is really bad. The very first paragraph is
       | practically nonsensical. There are several sentences that are
       | either badly wrong or maybe russian idioms translated directly.
       | Machine translation is ok for a rough idea but it's not good
       | enough to put out in the world and call a translation.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-30 23:00 UTC)