Changes

|title=The Great Mathematical Problems

|sort=Great Mathematical Problems, The

|publisher=Profile Books

|date=March 2013

|summary=For really good mathematicians, this is an incredible read. (Or so I'm told by a really good mathematician!) If you're not massively confident in your knowledge of the subject, it may not be the most accessible book, though.

}}

I joked with a friend when I first got the book that ''The Great Problems'' may be a step too far for me, and perhaps I should wait for Stewart to release a book called ''The Fairly Good Mathematical Problems'' as it would be closer to my level. While I originally said it in jest, by chapter four or so I was starting to think I'd been closer to the truth than I'd realised - Stewart seems, somewhat surprisingly given his past success with books like the brilliant [[Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart|Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures]], to have pitched this book about the 'really big questions in mathematics' at an extremely high level. With just a degree in mathematics and nearly ten years worth of experience teaching the subject, I found it something of a slog to get through, with many concepts being difficult to grasp, in particular the Mordell conjecture.