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The maths of Pythagoras is the maths we use today, whereas the scientific thinking of Aristotle has largely been consigned to history. To usher the reader into the 20th century Bellos explores the ideas of Georg Cantor and David Hilbert on infinity. Moreover, his goal is not to instruct, any more than the goal of THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is a manual on chess-playing.
When I saw this book on one of my frequent browses I thought that sounds right up my street so bought it (it had good reviews). Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF.
A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of mathsSunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize'Original and highly entertaining' Sunday Times'A page turner about humanity's strange, never easy and, above all, never dull relationship with numbers' New Scientist'Will leave you hooked on numbers' Daily TelegraphIn this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, and demonstrates the remarkable ways it's linked to our everyday lives.
We found logarithms (which were the only way to do complex engineering sums before calculators came along) and realised that the collective behaviour of people or molecules was predictable, even if it seemed random.
I was instead a believer in the theory that an industry segment collapses under the weight of too much money chasing it, and all you need for that analysis is a critical mass of Wall Street Journal headlines.
A conditional recommendation for people who like to brush up on their maths and not beaten up by formulas.And this book is also an answer (without actually trying to be) to all those people who ask – 'Why do we learn math if it has no real application in life?
Their lines tended to compress the distances between higher numbers — a logarithmic as opposed to linear depiction.Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. Bellos proceeds with a revelatory anecdote illustrating our own socialized mania for quantification. In my opinion it was a more appropriate title, mirroring some of the spirit of Lewis Carroll's verbal playfulness. I also liked that Bellos does not revert to hyperbolic fan's zeal to inspire the same passion in the reader. This is yet another concept with which I struggled, this time as a university student in 1974, because the idea of anything normal in a world characterised by Vietnam, Watergate and the Bay City Rollers could only be, in the words of Spiro T.
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