Welcome to DF's Extracurricular Math Library Page

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This page lists, first, the books and articles in extracurricular mathematics I have written either by myself or in collaboration with other people. Second part lists the books that are recommended for extracurricular mathematics (textbooks, problem solving compilations, books on contests etc.)

Part 1: Books/articles by Dmitri Fomin (et al.)

1. Mathematical Circles (Russian Experience) , (with Sergey Genkin and Ilya Itenberg), American Mathematical Society. (in authors' biased view, THE best book of all times for middle school students interested in extracurricular math).
You can buy it from AMS or from Amazon or from Barnes&Noble.

This book is a translation (much improved) of an original Russian edition named "Matematicheskie Kruzhki" published in 1994 in Kirov, Russia and long gone from bookstores in Russia. Unfortunately we haven't heard any talks about printing another few thousand copies... although a lot of people keep asking us where they can buy the book. American edition wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Mark Saul who put a lot of his time and energy into translation. Since 1996 this book (or the original) was translated and published in Ukraine(1997), Japan(1997) and India(1999).

The book is split into two parts titled Year 1 and Year 2 and each one of those parts consists of a few chapters. The chapters are devoted mostly to one subject (with exceptions of chapters "Problems For Year 1" and "Problems For Year 2") such as "Parity", "Pigeonhole Principle", "Induction", "Graphs-1", "Divisibility and Remainders", etc.

2. Leningrad Mathematical Olympiads (1987-1991) (with Alexey Kirichenko), MathPro Press.
You can buy it from Amazon or from Barnes&Noble.

This book was written in English specifically for MathPro Press series called Contests In Mathematics. Stanley Rabinowitz made it happen and we are very grateful to him for that.

It contains all problems from Leningrad Mathematical Olympiads for the five years listed in the title with complete solutions (that wasn't easy, believe me). To the authors' frustration this excellent book wasn't that successful in the US. We are thinking about publishing another compilation... say, 10 years worth of problems from LMO (we'll have to sacrifice the idea of writing full solutions for all the problems, of course).

3. Criminal Geometry, or A Matter of Principle, article in Quantum, Sep/Oct 1991, p.46

4. Getting It Together with "Polyominoes" (approach to tiling problems based on group theory), article in Quantum, Nov/Dec 1991, p.20

5. Light at the End of the Tunnel (invariants and monovariants), (with L.Kurlyandchik) article in Quantum, Mar/Apr 1994, p.16

6. Superheated by Equations (mathematics of heat exchange), article in Quantum, Jul/Aug 1993, p.4

Part 2: Recommended reading (textbooks)

Almost all the books listed below can be bought on the Internet from various retailers (like Amazon or Barnes&Noble; but don't forget the smaller ones - they may save you some dough).

Straight Lines and Curves by N.Vasilyev and V.Gutenmacher

Part 3: Problem solving compilations