Difference between revisions of "The Story of Mathematics"
| Line 36: | Line 36: | ||
* The magazine layout, with many sidebars on each page, makes it difficult to stay focused on the main thread. | * The magazine layout, with many sidebars on each page, makes it difficult to stay focused on the main thread. | ||
* The book glosses over some pretty important mathematical concepts, like only briefly mentioning ''e'', and not really even describing what it's used for. | * The book glosses over some pretty important mathematical concepts, like only briefly mentioning ''e'', and not really even describing what it's used for. | ||
| + | * The book suggests a 6x6 magic square being related to the mark of the beast, but, as far as I know, there isn't any real relationship. | ||
===Ugly=== | ===Ugly=== | ||
Revision as of 12:00, 29 March 2023
| The Story of Mathematics | ||||||||||||
|
Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
||||||||||||
|
The Story of Mathematics is a book about the history of mathematics written by Anne Rooney and published in January 2008. It is the first book in Rooney's The Story Of series.
Personal
| Own? | Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
|---|---|
| Read? | Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
| Finished | 201?. |
I probably bought my copy in the discount section of a book store around 2012, and I probably read it shortly thereafter. I remember liking it the first time through, then, wanting to create a page for it in this Wiki, I reread.
Review
|
Overall: |
|
Good
- Despite being about mathematics, the book is very easy to follow. It's fully illustrated and written for the average reader.
- The first chapter is a great introduction into teaching how numbers are a something humans had to invent rather than concepts that just exist on their own. It starts with pre-numeric systems like tick marks, then moves onto various early counting systems like Roman Numerals and the Chinese multiplicative system, then discusses the various and base-5, 12 and 60 systems used by ancient cultures before finally getting to the Hindu-Arabic system we use today. It also describes early versions of zero before it became a true placeholder, negative numbers, and fractions.
- I like how it discusses how early cultures don't have words for big numbers, and, when they do, they're cumbersome.
Bad
- The magazine layout, with many sidebars on each page, makes it difficult to stay focused on the main thread.
- The book glosses over some pretty important mathematical concepts, like only briefly mentioning e, and not really even describing what it's used for.
- The book suggests a 6x6 magic square being related to the mark of the beast, but, as far as I know, there isn't any real relationship.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Links
