30-Second Math: The 50 Most Mind-Expanding Theories In Mathematics, Each Explained In Half A Minute

by Richard J. Brown

From Rubik's cubes to Godel's incompleteness theorem, everything mathematical explained, with colour illustrations, in half a minute. Maths is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. So how can you avoid being the only dinner guest who has no idea who Fermat was, or what he proved? The more you know about Maths, the less of a science it becomes. 30 Second Maths takes the top 50 most engaging mathematical theories, and explains them to the general reader in half a minute, using nothing more than two pages, 200 words and one picture. Read at your own pace, and discover that maths can be more fascinating than you ever imagined.

Genres: Science, Mathematics, Nonfiction, Reference, School

160 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2012

Reviews

[Esraa Gibreen]

الكتاب عبارة عن ٥٠ موضوع متنوع عن الرياضيات، كل موضوع مكتوب عنه مقال قصير نبذة صغيرة لا تتعدى الصفحة وملحق بصورة تخص الموضوع. لذيذ جدا ولو يُقرأ على عدة أيام، كل يوم كام مقال هيبقى عظيم ومسلي ومفيد.🤩

[Largo Vanderkelen]

Prachtige illustraties. Tof om nieuwe dingen te leren over onderzoeksvelden waar je minder in thuis bent.
Intellectueel uitdagend en een mooie opstap naar verder lezen.

[source]

Livro interessante e breve que realmente reune os elementos fundamentais da matematica, sejam eles simples ou complexos. Tenciono voltar a abordar o livro para aprofundar conhecimentos. Nada mau de todo.

[Karltheplaya]

Nothing wrong with how the book is written but it’s just hard to learn complex maths by written texts. And to understand math you kinda have to see it in arithmetics language. The explanations weren’t always the best either but it’s of course hard to learn abstract things in just 30 seconds.
I did like the biographies and the history behind the math and the mathematicians though!

[Jeff Yoak]

This is a silly book. Its inch-deep treatment of topics couldn't be of interest to anyone at any level of knowledge.

[William Schram]

Mathematics is an intricate and far-flung field of inquiry. There is more to it than adding up figures. How do you open a book on a subject as lauded as mathematics? Well, you start with counting and move on from there. Children can count, but if you make it an abstraction, it can get fiendishly difficult. I'm not being too exact here, but this is only a review. After covering the basics of integers, fractions, rational numbers, and imaginary numbers, the book discusses ideas like Zero and negative numbers.

30 Second Math doesn't only talk about numbers; it also has mini-biographies on towering figures in mathematics. Blaise Pascal is the first one the book covers. Pascal was a true mathematician, but he turned religious and died young. The events I mentioned have nothing to do with each other, but it was a shame nonetheless. When I think of Pascal, the first thing that comes to mind is Pascal's Wager, even though it shouldn't be. Pascal did a lot of work in probability, and he built a calculating machine.

The book achieves what it sets out to do. Hardcore mathematicians aren't the intended audience for 30 Second Math. Someone who wants to raise some conversations at a party could look into this book and talk about counting to 10 in base 2. Maybe they could discuss the concept of zero as a number instead of a placeholder or non-entity.

Other than that, I have no problems with the book. It doesn't lie to you or misrepresent what it is. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Molino]

Matematik i all ära men fysik tar priset :P

[falaq]

i love maths sm guys 😔😔😔 also WDYM MY LECTURER IS AN AUTHOR FOR THIS BOOK ??? I PICKED IT UP RANDOMLY 5 DAYS AGO AND ITS HIS ??? i was genuinely so baffled when i read his name but richard u were so good and now i love u and this book even more XX

[Samuel Webb]

Fermat's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was the friends he made along the way

[Am Y]

Abstract mathematical concepts deciphered in 30 seconds? No, not even close.
The first few chapters explained nothing at all - just gave dictionary-type definitions which you can easily look up on Google.
Why do rational numbers exist? What is the significance of Fibonacci numbers? Of what use are imaginary numbers? Why do we have exponentials and logarithms?
Sadly, I don't know - at least not from reading this book.

If you are looking for the hows and whys behind various maths concepts, you won't find them here.

[Sara]

I doubt I will ever really finish this book. It is a really neat reference that I intend to reread often.

[Om Pokharel]

Collecting secondary school mathematics books from class 1 to 10 and copying the introduction section of the main chapters, this book also falls somehow into the same category. This book will neither work for those who do not know anything about mathematics, nor will it work for those who are curious about mathematics.

For those who studied maths first and dropped out in the middle, this book seems to be fine for them.

For me, the 3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES made me aware about mathematicians whose name I never ever heard before.

Although this book couldn't explain mobious strip, fractals, four colour mapping problem, and Poincaré conjecture; but made me curious about it.

[Thomas Gangert]

Ansprechend gestaltet und für Interessierte Mathe-Neulinge sicher verständlich. Anregend, wenn es darum geht, welche Themen sich mit weltfremd scheinenden mathematischen Problemen bearbeiten lassen.
Die mathematische Geschichte wird in unterschiedlichsten Kurzkapiteln von Babylon, Indien und den arabischen Raum bis heute beleuchtet. Ein kleines Manko: MathematikINNEN werden gar nicht beleuchtet - vielleicht eine Möglichkeit für einen Teil 2, in dem auch die Kryptographie, exponentielle Wachstums- bzw. Zerfallsprozesse, usw. behandelt werden könnten.

[Johnny Bilotta]

This was intended to be more of a reference book for me, since I am terrible at non-applied math. The whole thing was well written and made what would normally seem like complex mathmatical concepts very easy to understand.

As a software product designer and developer I am happy that I now have this in my collection. It is one I will certainly recommend to anyone doing any kind of programming.

[Synthetic Vox]

Succinct. I don’t know how approachable this is for a total neophyte, as I have read several books on mathematics. It was a nice summary of points, but given that there was no narrative, it was fairly dry. The images were enormously helpful. Would have loved an image to visualize all the different types of numbers (I’m still really confused about what an algebraic number is). Not sure I could recommend this to many people.

[Laura]

I started reading this over vacation. I am not savvy at math at all but decided to explore as I am interested in its application to my job (front end ux designer) and just out of basic curiosity after a lifetime of declaring I am bad at math. Since i need to visualize something in order to really understand it, this book is helpful so far. Granted, I have not learned anything in just 30 seconds, because I am not used thinking mathematically lol. I am about 75% through the book right now.

[Paul Mulcahey]

I like this book each page and sometimes two or three pages takes on a new math topic which you can review in about 30 seconds if you like math you’ll probably take a little longer and think about the details you read. In any event it’s the kind of book. I enjoy where I can read a few pages each day and feel like I read and understood something I would recommend a book to anyone who is interested in science or mathematics. It’s a great review on many topics.

[Chris]

This is a very interesting book, however, unless you are a champion speed reader it is going to take you longer then 30 seconds to read each section. This book does not go into great depth of any single concept, but does cover a broad array of mathematical concepts. While this book does not provide much detail, it does attempt to link concepts as well as some practical applications for the math.

[Mia]

• lots of interesting theories but didn’t explain them particularly well
• opened my eyes to just how complex and unfolding the subject of math research is
• made me want to know more about a range of mathematical ideas

[Jeannette]

A cute coffee table book about the history and practices of math.

[Aad]

Good starting point for further exploration.

[Tommy Niittula]

Det är nog lite för kort med 30 sekunder att gå igenom koncept i matematiken, men då har man i alla fall fått en liten översikt :)

[Björn Käll]

The theory’s are too compressed, but for the prize and size a pleasant little book.

[Aida Saldaña Hernandez]

Great book about mathematics theories, I thoroughly enjoyed it !

[Hebe]

Ik deed er langer over dan 30 seconden om dit boek te lezen.

[Jeremy Schmitz]

Interesant mwn inget nytt, för kort för att lära sig något

[Jeffrey]

A decent survey of several mathematical topics (not all “mind-expanding” nor “theories”), though not really thirty-second explanations.

[Daniel Bleasby]

Quick recap on mathematical ideas and interesting facts which you may not know.

[Ray]

I personally found reading this to be a tantalizing experience, one that raised my interest in number theory and encouraged me to find resources to study from. That said, I do not think I would really recommend it to anyone that already has even the smallest idea of something they wish to learn. I was simply fortunate that at the time, I was feeling more curious than I had been in the time preceding my reading, and had a lack of inspiration for how to direct my curiosity. Nevertheless, for its personal contribution to me, I think of this book fondly.

[Maurizio Codogno]

"numeri trascendentali"?

Mah. Capisco l'idea di volere raccontare in poche parole molti concetti matematici. Però mi pare che questo libro abbia dei problemi di ipersemplificazione. Per dire, troviamo scritto che «A good way of identifying an irrational number is to check that its decimal expansion does not repeat.» Se uno dovesse davvero verificare la successione delle cifre decimali per vedere se un numero è irrazionale, saremmo messi piuttosto male. Altra frase: «Also known as a natural or counting number, a whole number is any positive integer on a number line or continuum. Opinion varies, however, on whether 0 is a whole number.» I numeri interi ("whole numbers") sono quelli positivi e negativi, oltre allo zero. Sono i naturali che possono o no avere lo zero a seconda di chi li definisce. Anche l'idea di indicare alcune "persone chiave" sui vari concetti non è ben definita. Che ha a che fare per esempio sir Roger Penrose col rapporto aureo? (ok, un'idea ce l'avrei, ma non la si può evincere dal testo). Anche la traduzione di Simone Monticelli non mi è piaciuta. Per esempio, "Another dimension" diventa "Oltre le due dimensioni" che non ha un grande senso visto il contesto di quella pagina; ma soprattutto come si fa a scrivere "numeri trascendentali" anziché trascendenti?