Oddly enough, someone who was more interested in the Sanskrit than the programming recommended this book to me recently. Despite the mixed reviews, I bought it and have skimmed through it. It seems long-winded and meandering, but interesting. I had no idea that Sanskrit had such a long history of formal grammar. In high school, I was inspired to give a lecture to my second year Latin class about generating sentences through rules. The concept was marred by my ignorance of formal grammar, computers, any other language except English, etc. But, I always wondered if the logic of Latin shaped my interest in mathematics and computers, or if I was already such a hopeless geek by that time that I was unable to absorb a language in other way than algorithmically. And why should that be? I don't think the book answers my question, but it may cause pleasing mind wandering. Hilarie

From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 11:21:48 -0800 Subject: [math-fun] Geek Sublime

This book, "Geek Sublime" by Vikram Chandra, looks interesting:

< http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Sublime-Vikram-Chandra/dp/0571310303/ >.

Has anyone read it?

--Dan