About book The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour Of Math, From One To Infinity (2012)
This is a charming book that attempts to provide an understanding of Mathematics for pretty much anyone.As one who has a strong background in Mathematics, I found it an easy read. I found it to be quite interesting, despite my already knowing quite a bit about the topics being covered. The writing style is light, engaging, even charming, and includes a lot of items that relate the Mathematics to the real world (something I find too many Mathematics courses seldom do)Of course, as someone with a good Mathematical background, I felt the need for more at the end of each chapter, but that would have changed the goal of the book, and probably reduced its effectiveness. It is unfortunate that so many people come out of secondary schools and colleges having taken Mathematics courses, but not really knowing what Mathematics is all about. Usually, they are overwhelmed by the symbols, and underwhelmed by the apparent lack of relationship with the world as they see and experience it. Ask a typical college-educated person to describe what Mathematics is all about, and I think you will see what I mean. Most answers will probably talk about arithmetic, algebra or geometry, and will probably not be able to connect those subjects with each other, since Mathematics tends to get taught in separate courses that don't sufficiently connect what has been learned before.When asked to define Mathematics, people will most likely focus on arithmetic or algebra, but not be able to move far beyond those topics, as those are what most people are familiar with. I asked Google to define Mathematics, and here is what it told me:"the abstract science of number, quantity, and space."I don't find that satisfactory. I believe a Mathematician would be more likely to define Mathematics as, perhaps, "The study of patterns". Unfortunately, that's probably too abstract to mean much to typical non-Mathematicians.By reading this book, I think the typical reader will gain a better perception of what Mathematics is all about. It's a great contribution to the set of books that can provide a better understanding of what Mathematics is, and why it is important, and shows that it truly is relevant -- indispensable, even to everyday life. In this book Steven Strogatz makes a brief tour of many areas of mathematics. He starts that tour with the concept of natural numbers and approaches many subjects like arithmetics, geometry, trigonometry, algebra, calculus, statistics and so many other subjects in a simple but highly effective way. He didn't want a fat and huge book about maths or calculus for example and instead he preferred to make a simpler book destined to everyone where he makes an introduction to mathematics and explains some of its greatest ideas. Although graduates in Physics or Maths may know all or almost anything of what's in the book (I think that there were some people who hoped something more sophisticated and ended up disappointed) and it was based on a New York Times column, that doesn't take any credits for this book because it's rare to see maths presented in such a concise and simple way and the texts are very fun to read with lots of endnotes in order to explain some details and give indications about specialized books to the most curious. That's why I gave 5 stars to this book and my only correction I point out (as this book is for everyone it doesn't make sense to have it full with equations, even if the book has some calculations and simple equations) is that in chapter two he says that only two groups of stones which have between 1 and 10 elements form a square but that's false because in fact there are three (he forgot the group with one stone which forms a square as well), but that's a relatively minor mistake probably due to a oversight.
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great book for everyone who hated mathematics since high school or middle school.
—ash
I might not have failed math repeatedly if I had this book in 11th grade.
—Kilandra
Great. I wish this had been part of my high school education.
—btlambert
