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Alex's Adventures in Numberland
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Review
In a charming, conversational prose style, and with diagrams to ease brain stress, he draws us into a forbidding world, often going into the history of famous bits of maths, including the origins of Tetris and Rubik's Cube.
The most immediately fascinating chapter is on the application of probability theory to gambling, with insights into slot machines, insurance, lotteries and a neat explanation of Pascal's wager on the existence of God. --Metro
What Bellos calls "the wow factor" of mathematics leaps out at the reader from every page ... The stories prove so engaging, the personalities so colorful, that readers may forget
they are mastering some powerful mathematical concepts. --Booklist
`A mathematical wonder that will leave you hooked on numbers' --Daily Telegraph
`Spectacularly successful introduction to the excitement and wonder of mathematics.' --Sunday Times
`He renders the world of numbers accessible and captivating' --Daily Express
`A truly marvellous survey of modern mathematics' --Martin Gardner, for more than 25 years author of the 'Mathematical Games' column in Scientific American
`An unforgettable journey of intellectual discovery'
--Apostolos Doxiadis, author of Logicomix and Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
Starting with chapter zero, all twelve chapters are a fascinating exploration of the wonders of maths.
--City A.M Newspaper
Product Description
In this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks. Covering subjects from adding to algebra, from set theory to statistics, and from logarithms to logical paradoxes, he explains how mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives. Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. He shines a light on the mathematical patterns in nature, and on the peculiar predictability of random behaviour. He eats a potato crisp whose revolutionary shape was unpalatable to the ancient Greeks, and he shows the deep connections between maths, religion and philosophy. Alex weaves a journey from primary school to university level maths, from ancient history to the computing frontline, and from St Louis, Missouri, to Braintree, Essex. He meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany, consults a numerologist in the US desert, meets a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan, and seeks advice from a venerable Hindu sage in India. An unlikely but exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs, Alex's dispatches from 'Numberland' show the world of maths to be a much friendlier and more colourful place than you might have imagined.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
129 of 131 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I wished I had read this when I was in school !,
By
This review is from: Alex's Adventures in Numberland (Hardcover)
Mathematics gets a bad press in school and elsewhere, characterized as dry and difficult ,is one of the most hated topics in a student can read. But for Alex Bellos math can be inspiring and brilliantly creative and he proves it in this book that can be read easily by most non-geeks.
Mathematical thought is one of the great achievements of the human race, and arguably the foundation of all human progress. The world of mathematics is a remarkable place. Exploring the mysteries of randomness, he explains why it is impossible for our iPods to randomly select songs. In probing the many intrigues of that most beloved of numbers, pi, he visits with two brothers so obsessed with the elusive number that they built a supercomputer in their Manhattan apartment to study it. Bellos has traveled all around the globe and has plunged into history to uncover fascinating stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest areas of mathematical work today.From the Amazon forest he tells the story of a tribe there who can count only to five and reports on the latest findings about the math instinct and also the revelation that ants can actually count how many steps they've taken.In India he finds the brilliant mathematical insights of the Buddha and in Japan he visits the creator of Sudoku and explores the delights of mathematical games. Whether writing about how algebra solved Swedish traffic problems, visiting the Mental Calculation World Cup to disclose the secrets of lightning calculation, or exploring the links between pineapples and beautiful teeth, Bellos is a wonderfully engaging guide who never fails to delight even as he edifies. Here's Looking at Euclid is a rare gem that brings the beauty of math to life.
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unputdownable!,
By
This review is from: Alex's Adventures in Numberland (Hardcover)
As one who, many years ago, just scraped by on the minimum amount of maths needed to pursue a career in chemistry, I've always enjoyed reading user-friendly books on maths --- with strictly no exam at the end --- but this one is in a class of its own. Every page-turn brings new vistas of mathematical marvels.
For all that, among the most interesting parts were those which dealt with might be thought, by comparison, more prosaic subjects, namely, the history of maths, right from man's first efforts at counting. I didn't want the book to end!
106 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mathematical highlight,
By
This review is from: Alex's Adventures in Numberland (Hardcover)
`Alex's Adventures in Numberland' is a delightful cornucopia of stories and insights into the history and development of mathematical ideas. Peppered with wit and written with great charm, it sweeps the reader along in its exploration of the weird and wonderful world of mathematical abstractions, old and new. The narrative is greatly helped by the author's journalistic experience and his ability to use historical settings to draw the reader in to what may otherwise appear to be some tricky mathematics. The story is given a human face by the many anecdotes based on Alex's visits to talk with mathematicians across the globe, giving the book the feel of a travelogue, reflecting the best of travel writers such as William Dalrymple. Much is packed in to the 400 pages and the occasional disappointment that some of one's own favourite snippets and characters are omitted is more than compensated for by the exhilaration of the journey. A real page turner!
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