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Loading... One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbersby Andrew Hodges
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A fairly interesting meditation on the integers 1 through 9. Though, by 'meditation' I mean an unstructured, free-association between many disparate thoughts rather than a concerted effort. For those who are interested in the trivia, oddities, and bizarre connections among the numbers, the various Wikipedia pages are more informative. But, for a reasonably entertaining read, One to Nine is all right. (  ) lanewilkinson | Dec 4, 2009 |  I couldn't get into this book! For me it was a seemingly disjointed mishmash of elusive mathematical/numerical references and not interesting enough to compel me to put the energy into tracking them down or working through them. Maybe I would have done better if I had more of a mathematical background, but then, it was that background I thought I might find in this book. (  ) sdmcrae | Jun 28, 2009 | I don't particularly like doing math, but I love these sort of micro-history takes on life's ordinary things. barbara.levie | Sep 4, 2008 | Erudite and entertaining discourse on a wide variety of topics related to simple mathematics, including some ramifications for computer science and fundamental physics. fpagan | Jul 24, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 039306641X, Hardcover)What Lynne Truss did for grammar in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Andrew Hodges now does for mathematics.Andrew Hodges, one of Britain's leading biographers and mathematical writers, brings numbers to three-dimensional life in this delightful and illuminating volume, filled with illustrations, which makes even the most challenging math problems accessible to the layperson. Inspired by millennia of human attempts to figure things out, this pithy book, which tackles mathematical conundrums from the ancient Greeks to superstring theory, finds a new twist to everything from musical harmony to code breaking, from the chemistry of sunflowers to the mystery of magic squares. Starting with the puzzle of defining unity, and ending with the recurring nines of infinite decimals, Hodges tells a story that takes in quantum physics, cosmology, climate change, and the origin of the computer. Hodges has written a classic work, at once playful but satisfyingly instructional, which will be ideal for the math aficionado and the Sudoku addict as well as for the life of the party. 40 illustrations. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:55 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
