David Blatner

This is a quirky history of pi in 130 pages. From the ancients to the modern day, the number that would be able to decipher a circle's circumference by its known radius has fascinated mathematicians. Blatner discusses a variety of history revolving around pi, including the development of equations to calculate it and devices people use to memorize it to several decimal points.

The first thing that drew me to the book was its design. Its cover is yellow, square, and just a bit bigger than the show more old Beatrix Potter books I read as a young child. Peppered throughout the text are tidbits of information highlighted in squares, rectangles, or circles a different color from the page. And - the most fun aspect of it, in my opinion - throughout the text is, as if a footnote, is pi calculated to one million decimal places. Because most of the information is accessible to a layperson, I was willing to overlook the many equations that went completely over my head. show less

Definitely an interesting book that is still more or less accurate and gives mostly correct information about what it's like to fly. I use all of these qualitative adjectives because the book was published 15 years ago, and since then we've had a huge recession and jet fuel price fluctuations that have created a lot of changes in the commercial aviation industry. We have fewer commercial airlines, no longer get served meals on airplanes, have to pay to check bags, and can't bring liquids in show more our carry-on items. (For the most part.) However, things such as jet safety, turbulence, and many other points addressed in this book have maintained relatively constant.

One thing I really didn't like about this book was the format. Be a coffee table book with cutesy quotes and informational columns, or be a chapter book about flying. This book tries to be both and sort of fails at both accounts. I found myself completely ignoring all of the cutesy quotes, and most of the pictures in this book are not captioned, which makes them almost useless. At times, the text is placed over images of airplanes that makes the text nearly unreadable.

Otherwise... I would give this book a solid "borrow from your library if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of flying on an airplane" recommendation. But I certainly wouldn't spend money on it. show less

This is a neat little book outlining the history of man's attempt to define pi (the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter). In a few short pages it covers thoughts on pi from Egypt to Greece and on to Rome (they used 3 1/8, which is way off as far as construction calculations go-any jab I can get in on the Romans I'll take), through the middle ages and into the modern world, with segues through India and China. Ironically, the 5th century Chinese mathematician Tsu Chung-chih and show more his son Tsu Keng-chih calculated pi to within 8 millionths of a percent, approximating it at 355/113. They used a hexagon and kept doubling the sides 12 times to approximate a circle. I'm always amazed at how close mankind came to discovering the rules of integral calculus in the ancient past. The book also has the first one million decimal places of pi scattered throughout the text, some of which is too small to read. There are even a few math puns, comics and poems, along with MIT's football cheer. All in all, this is a really good book for anyone who cares to learn a bit about the magic of pi without being overwhelmed by technical minutia.

'Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
I would fix it at three
for it's simpler, you see
than 3.14159'

'Integral z squared dz
from 1 to the cube root of 3
times the cosine
of 3 pi over 9
equals log of the cube root of e'

These poems either prove 1) Math nerds have a sense of humor, 2) Math is a language easier to learn than French but not as easy as Japanese, or 3) You can easily make a limerick out of almost anything show less

It was pleasant for this math enthusiast to read this. There is a lot of history from antiquity to the modern era of approximations for this important ratio. Also a lot of memorization feats and general mnemonics topics. Also, milestones in calculating numbers of digits, both before and during the computer age.

One thing that I liked reading of was the history of the Indiana pi bill. The story was more colorful than I had learned, and I was glad to learn it was not enacted.