Regular Polytopes

This is a classic written by a master. It will take a while to get through it. It is often the problem that someone as smart as Coxeter, doesn't realize how much smarter he is than the average person. Therefore, his writing is not exactly written for the novice. I would like to take issue with this description of the book "anyone with an elementary knowledge of geometry and trigonometry will find this one of the best source books available on this fascinating study." That is far from true. On the second page, there is a double integral. This book is full of advanced math. Be prepared.

This is not for the faint of heart. It is very advanced, requires a full knowledge of calculus, analytical geometry, advanced algebra, group theory, and much, much more.If you're interested in Polyhedra and 3- dimensionsal symmetry, I would recommend "Mathematical Models", by Cundy and Rollett. It gets into a lot if the math behind the models, sure, but it's understandable to the average, interested, reader with a math background.The same cannot be said about " Regular Polytopes". I couldn't recommend it to anyone other than a world-class, university level professor or researcher.

Well it kept me busy for 5 years and I revelled in my uniqueness as I admired my reflected clone, being alone it made me savor my uniqueness and wonder which one of us was going to throw my dog his bone? it reflected the refracted Spirit of the Age....

An Introduction to the Geometry of N Dimensions  which I have used well over the years seems be a good book to go with this one.It may takes me years to get the worth of this book,but I have already the first yield.The combination of group theory with higher dimensionsin combinatorial topological terms has been a 20th century gold mineof new ideas and new groups.That some of the results have seeded the Engineeringmathematics of error correcting codes should be noted.That Cosmology has recently been using both Coxeter and Cartan tosee back toward the beginning of time shows that physics hasn't been blind to geometry.

Amazon recommended this book to me for $10 and I bought it mostly on name recognition of Coxeter. I've only read the first 3 chapters but have already learned a lot. I was aware there were only a few regular polyhedra but didn't realize there were such simple combinatorial proofs.

A more quantitative approach to the regular polytopes. I find working through trying to make them with paper, or other arts and crafts supplies, or with symmetry blocks displaying the different symmetries is extremely helpful in learning the subject. Also, the symmetry tables included are a beautiful thing. Excellent book.

This is a beautiful classic that continues to be relevant today.

Whilst a lot of the maths is beyond me I can follow enough to be entranced at the way everything unfolds from basic principles such as the Pythagorean right angle triangle theorem.I very much like the historical notes as well.Of course, this book is deservedly famous as one of the seminal works on higher dimensional polytopes.See my models at 3d Mandalas dot com

I'll start off with a warning: I brought this book because it was relevant to my masters dissertation in mathematics, and it's a surprisingly heavy text for the price point. I definitely struggle with bits of it, though Coxeter is an engaging expositor.This is a solid (e-)book, and the historical notes are great, though there is some frustrating use of non-standard terminology in places. Further, and this is ultimately why this review is a 3 star one, the Kindle edition suffers greatly from not having any way to navigate by page, when there are frequent references to page numbers throughout the text. This makes the exposition rather harder to follow than it needs to be, and this isn't an easy text to start with.There are also missing hyperlinks when sections are referred to, but this is more forgiveable.

This book was clearly a labour of love by Coexeter. It is not a particularly easy read, but is a very good reference to regular shapes in higher dimensions.

This book is a classic, by one of the best mathematicians of the 20th century. It's a bargain.

Lo que esperaba

Un livre à mettre dans toutes les mains, mais au début il ne faut pas avoir peur de ne pas comprendre un paragraphe ou l'autre (je pense par exemple à l'introduction aux "configurations", qui n'était pas claire pour moi qui n'en avais jamais entendu parler). Toutefois l'agencement est excellent et les notions introduites sans complexité superflue. En lisant à son aise, en retravaillant les formules, le texte est relativement simple à suivre, accessible et très intéressant.