The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics
Product Description
Math’s infinite mysteries and beauty unfold in this follow-up to the best-selling The Science Book. Beginning millions of years ago with ancient “ant odometers” and moving through time to our modern-day quest for new dimensions, it covers 250 milestones in mathematical history. Among the numerous delights readers will learn about as they dip into this inviting anthology: cicada-generated prime numbers, magic squares from centuries ago, the discovery of pi and calculus, and the butterfly effect. Each topic gets a lavishly illustrated spread with stunning color art, along with formulas and concepts, fascinating facts about scientists’ lives, and real-world applications of the theorems. … More >>
The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics
A very nice math stories compendium: all famous mathematicians, theorems, proofs and problems in mankind history. Very well presented, lots of pictures.
Nice to read lying sideways at the bed (all texts are in the left page and all the pictures at the right). No in-depth analysis of anything, just simple explanations.
Rating: 4 / 5
Based on the associated webpage, I expected a somewhat textbook style of book using illustrations to highlight the concepts. However, this book is approximately 50% illustrations. For every page of text there is a page sized illustration. For some of he pages there is also a small illustration on the page with the text. Now, some of the illustrations actually complement the text, but there are far too many instances of the illustrations being just photographs, paintings or engravings of the historical figures responsible for some of the greatest mathematical discoveries. It’s hard to learn anything from a photo of a dead mathematician. Many of the illustrations that do reference the concepts could have been much improved with little effort. This is a good source for terms to look up elsewhere in more depth.
Rating: 3 / 5
This heavy book is light.
By “heavy” I mean excellent, profound, important, and yes, the book weighs a lot too, the way many high quality art books do, the ones you place out on a display table, an excellent place for this book also. I do not mean anything ponderous or oppressive; that is one reason I also say this book is light.
By “light” I mean every time you turn a thick glossy page, you are enlightened by a page of lucid text on the left, and a colorful associated image on the right, and another fantastic mathematical discovery that invites entire books to be written. The text is lightweight in a good way; it can be read and understood without a math background, yet considering its brevity, is often surprisingly complete at mentioning major points, along with many pages of notes in the back for further reading. The 250 major mathematical discoveries are in chronological order, starting with prehistory and continuing through to the present.
If you already know about the exquisite beauty of math, buy this book and put it out so as to help enlighten others, or send it as a gift to a child and help save a soul, or pick it up the next time someone wants to talk about intelligent design and you’d rather talk about truly intelligent design.
Isn’t it tragic that many humans are blind to the transcendental experience of contemplating how zero is the same as e to the i pi power plus one? Or blind to the beauty of a multidimensional mathematical object known as E8 that just happens to arrange the lowest level building blocks of theoretical physics? Mathematics is so intimately entwined with the real world that some have even considered the extreme possibility that maybe our universe is not just described by math, maybe it IS math. All these points are covered in the book.
This book may help the reader by shining a new light on universal reality. Seeing mathematical beauty is a realistic, repeatable, awe inspiring experience that can be shared by all sentient beings, everywhere, independent of any belief systems. Extraterrestrials will also know these truths to be self-evident.
Rating: 5 / 5
Excellent book – for those of you that like Maths and the history of theories and solutions that we use in everyday life, this book is for you. It covers all topics from thousands of years ago to the present day – something for everyone. I especially liked the paradoxes in mathematical proofs – Cliff uses examples to convey messages simply and easily.
Great stuff
Rating: 5 / 5
This chunky, lavishly illustrated tome shows off mathematics in a most interesting light. The Golden Ratio, the Birthday Paradox, assorted conjectures, theorems, wagers, famous mathematicians, they’re all here and then some, fascinatingly described in text and visualized with historical illustrations, portraits, and beautiful intriguing photos and computer graphics (check out the fractals and other computer-generated representations. I particularly like the image accompanying the “Birthday Paradox” entry. All this information in one book is a bargain, and makes great browsing for anyone interested in math,art,nature, every day events, and the universe itself.
Rating: 5 / 5