No collection of popular maths books would be complete without a work by one of our very favourite authors, Ian Stewart. One we particularly like is 17 equations that changed the world. As the name suggests, it's about equations that have had a profound impact on humankind, from Pythagoras's theorem about right-angled triangles to the Black-Scholes equation about financial derivatives. It's a fascinating and accessible tour through some very interesting maths.

Stewart has written plenty of popular maths books, which are all well worth looking at, but there's another one we'd like to mention: Does god play dice is a great introduction to mathematical chaos, which inspired one of us to go and do a PhD in maths — she's never looked back!

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