Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

Product Information

The latter is no doubt core to the book's strengths, because Bellos brings a hobbyists's enthusiasm along with a sympathy for the semi-literacy most of us bring to the maths. It is noticeable that the author is trying to offer something to readers who have little or nothing to do with numbers and maths. Rather, he provides a series of interesting facts and folksy supporting anecdotes to show the development of: (1) different fields--geometry, probability, statistics; (2) concepts--pi, phi, infinity, zero; and (3) tools--logarithms, slide rules, the quincunx; in a way that is mostly understandable and usually entertaining.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Statistics therefore became important for states, for economists, and to discover and understand climate change.

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. I also liked that Bellos does not revert to hyperbolic fan's zeal to inspire the same passion in the reader.

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.

In 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. He shines a light on the mathematical patterns in nature, and on the peculiar predictability of random behaviour. Probability, Number Theory, Geometry and Statistics follow, and in the limit as the page number tends to infinity, the book tends to resemble a maths textbook. But you would be hard-pressed to find a book on this subject with the same humour, wonder, and with the comfort of knowing that the author is resolutely on your side on this (sometimes difficult) adventure through the land of numbers and shapes.