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Blast into Math! Preface

I believe that anyone can learn mathematics if it is presented in a way they can understand, and that
a positive mathematical learning experience can increase one’s overall confidence. This book aims to
challenge its readers while supporting their efforts with enthusiastic encouragement, lively examples,
entertaining mnemonics, and helpful hints. Motivating by example, a parallel is made between readers
working and struggling through the book and research mathematicians working and struggling with their
research problems; the reader is not working alone, he or she is working within the global community of
mathematicians. In the end the reader’s efforts will be rewarded with a strong sense of accomplishment,
and it is my sincere hope that this sense of accomplishment based on overcoming mathematical challenges
will help readers to face and overcome other challenges as well.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to colleagues, students, friends, and family who encouraged and supported me in

this endeavor. It began as lecture notes for the Education Program for Gifted Youth at Stanford University,
2006, and I am grateful to Rick Sommer and my students for inspiring me to turn those notes into a
book. Many thanks to colleagues and friends who read and commented on the draft: Henry Segerman,
Jeff Stopple, Antonio Iarrobino, Gerald Folland, Pieter Moree, Ravi Vakil, Michail Verskajn, and Vickie
Kern. I am also grateful to Ina Mette for her suggestion to choose a catchier and more succinct title. Sophie
Tergeist’s enthusiastic support and Bookboon have been wonderful. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the
support of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.

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