I am reading Ian Stewart's great book:  In Pursuit of the Unknown, subtitled "17 Equations that Changed the World".  Here are the subjects of some chapters:

Pythagoras's theorem; Logarithms; Calculus; Newton's law of gravity; the square-root of minus one; the normal distribution; the wave equation; Fourier transform.

Each chapter starts off with an equation and its historical background, then shows how the equation influenced subsequent math and science developments.  So you learn more than you might expect, even from seemingly basic chapters.  The early chapters are easy to understand -- the math looks a little more daunting in some of the later chapters, which I have not read yet.

Among much else, I learned that the Greek "trigonometry" means "triangle measure".  (Not sure how I got this far without knowing that).

-- Neil

Thanks Neil.  I am going to order the book.  

Hi Neil,

Sounds like a good book, but the equations do things the old fashioned way.

What d'yer mean they give 100% accurate solutions ?

AI (aka machine learning) is the newfangled way, where you can let your PC churn away for hours on end, to produce an 85% accurate solution (if you're lucky).

Don't know much about AI ?  Not to worry - I've found just the book :

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You:      How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place

Great book by Janelle Shane.  Could be subtitled "Some intelligence is more artificial than others"

Who needs DSP ?   ;-)

Hi Woodpecker,

I guess we may find out how well AI works next time we buy a car...

Neil