Dr. Euler's Fabulous Formula: Cures Many Mathematical Ills

Dr Nahin is a friendly kinda guy, almost as fluffy-looking as the two big tabby cats he says he lives with, and this is a friendly kinda book. Tricky to pull off with mathematics- sorry- math. -where the bookcovers tend to feature dour geometric drawings and angular typefaces and tend to prefer things that way thankyou very much.

(Nahin asks about when math became 'sexy' but we'll sidestep that can o' worms in favour of just knowing what's going on with the proofs and calculations... If you don't mind!)

So there's a middle ground to be trod between the comic book, horn-rimmed, simplification of mathematics as 'entertainment', all secret formulae and unassuming geniuses, and the more deadpan
experts of real-life. Deadpan's okay, if you show more can do the sums. Otherwise, it's unbearable. So I was glad to see lines of working in this book.

I imagine the target reader of this book to be someone who knows who Euler is ( ie pronounced 'Oiler') and what the formula is, but perhaps not all that much more- by 'professional mathematician' standards. So Nahin makes no assumptions about what the reader can or cannot do with algebra.

He strolls with us through a few passages of the type of stuff we may be more familiar with, more able to do ourselves. And if the rest of the book is a bit hazy on recollection, we can trust him that it's all kinda what he said it is. And kinda will do better than not at all. the next tutor- you know who, the deadpan guy- he can add to it with his deadpan course book and fill in the details.

One remembers what one needs to know and can relate to. As someone who has 'had a go' at teaching, I can concur that it isn't always easy to make easy things look easy. And it is harder still to make something tricky look do-able. You can look clever doing something difficult. But do the kids actually geddit?

I would make the case that Mathematics is a particularly 'get it or you don't' type of subject- especially if, like I was, you are not the most experienced teacher. Dr Nahin surely knows better than that and shows it by making careful choices of accessible material which, experience shows, could do with being talked over. He smooths out the edges of the scary math.

Euler and co remain distant geniuses but with some annotated algebra- hey- it's okay! The sea's awful rough over thataway but this bit's swimmable. And swim we do.

Bogan show less

While lively and well-written, this book feels like a re-hash of engineerng mathematics. The author is very enthusiastic about presenting long algebraic derivations. It is an advanced book requiring some college-level mathematics, and I am not sure if Euler's formula is actually given anywhere in the book. University engineering students might be most appreciative of this book.

Quite a technical and chatty book. Biography of Euler at the end is interesting.