Mathematical Sorcery: Revealing the Secrets of Numbers

by Calvin C. Clawson

In this captivating quest for pure knowledge, Clawson takes readers on a journey of discovery to divulge the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians, whose stunning revelations have deep meaning to this day. 134 illustrations.

Genres: Mathematics, Nonfiction, Science, Physics

Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 1999

Reviews

[Pearl Khurana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you for making me fall in love with mathematics yet again!
And making me realise on a newer level how most college professors suck.
And for giving tips on how to teach certain topics! Can't wait to share this beautiful, beautiful marvel called Mathematics/Calculus with young minds xD

[Aiman Adlawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is good for anybody who are curious enough to get their heads on calculus and other math concepts but wants to avoid deep level explanation. The book tells almost all topics for a college calculus course but in a broad sense. It starts from how math came about in human civilization, to arithmetics, to understanding cones and shapes, the infinite series, axioms, the set theory, basic geometry and trigonometry, cartesian coordinates, quadratics, matrixes to calculus. Its really interesting to see how math developed over time.
Also, the book tells about some significant persons who contributed to the development of math. Persons like, Thales, Pythgoras, Zeno, Eulid, Archimedes, Galileo, Kepler, Decartes, Fermat, Euler, Gauss, Newton and many more. Good book and I recommend this.

[Edd Marbello-Santrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

For someone who loves maths, this book will be amazing. The conections that the author achieve between expression so usual for us, but in a simple way don't have relations, are maybe the best thing the book have. Isaac Newton's figure is the most relevant among others great mathematicians or scientist. You can feel his work almost in that age or era, finding the results so familiar an espectacular. Nothing else that calculus fundamental theorem for instance. Euclid, Fermat, Descartes, Leibniz, Gauss and so on. Those whom did awesome efforts to see the truth beyond the faith.

[Chris Burrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read page 240 about Sir Isaac Newton.
His genius allowed him to discover truth in the Bible, going against what the church was requiring.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite frankly, I wasn't impressed. It's been many moons since I really dug into any math. It was never my forte, but I never had trouble with it either. When Mr. Clawson promised at the beginning of the book that if you remembered your college algebra and geometry that you'd be able to get through the book without problems, I was foolish enough to believe him. Let me state here and now that while you probably can get through it with just that, you WILL get bogged down. I did. Bernoulli numbers? He talks about them at one point but never explains them. So I had to go hunt down an explanation from another resource. The book isn't laid out in a logical order, either. He starts with the Sumerians and Babylonians and progresses through the Greeks just fine, but then... whoops! Time for proofs! Then skip a thousand years or so and on to Descartes and Fermat, then back to a random chapter on series and sequences before heading to functions. If there's a logic there, I fail to see it. Also, in my (library) copy, someone with more math know-how than me clarified the lune/right triangle proof so that someone with no math background like myself could understand it better. My 'helper' also clarified what 'certain condition' must be met. I feel that's the sort of thing the author should have done in the first place. If you're writing for beginners and people without a math background, keep it simple! I do understand that the author is a mathematician. He likes math or he wouldn't have written the book. I like math, too, but I'm a random adult who picked the book up out of sheer curiosity and do not need to be sidetracked by equations that have either nothing to do with the topic at hand or that complicate things unnecessarily, just because the author thinks it's 'interesting' or 'fascinating.' He mentions that proofs must be simple but can't manage that in his writing. (His editor needs to be hauled out and given a separate reaming for some of the grammatical errors I noted along the way, let alone for not making him restructure the entire book in a logical fashion.)

I got through it. I only give one star to books I don't finish. At one point the author says that he gets carried away in his classrooms and often winds up finishing problems that he intends to let the students solve, and I feel that this book is filled with the same problem. He started writing it, got carried away, and kept going far past the intended scope and into ideas that should have been either better explained or left out altogether. I don't feel like I learned much, and I'm still debating whether it was worth my time and effort. Maybe if you're a math-y person, this book works for you. But if you're going to say that someone with a college algebra background can get through it, you better make sure that's true.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a popular history of mathematics with a catchy and slightly disingenuous title. For there is no sorcery or magic involved, it is the wonder and usefulness of mathematics in both the pure and applied form.
It begins with the emergence of the concept of counting and the historical context as to why it emerged. With the development of agriculture, both animal husbandry and crops, human groups became fixed in location. This led to the emergence of governments to organize and protect the populations, which led to the levying of taxes. All of this required the ability to count, tally and record, which meant the mental concept of numbers had to develop as well as a way to efficiently record and manipulate them. The last chapter of history covers the development of and basic applications of calculus, so the history essentially ends in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The journey from start to finish is an understandable tour through several of the most significant advances in mathematics, from the development and use of negative numbers, fractions, irrational and transcendental numbers to complex numbers. Clawson is to be commended for he does not skimp on the use of formulas, when one is needed one is used.
Math, science and the increasing complexity of societies have been married into a feedback loop for thousands of years. Sometimes the need led to the development of mathematics, for example, when society needed counting numbers, the math was invented. Other times the math had to be invented to explain the science. In other circumstances, the math was developed before society had a use for it.
In all cases, the development of the math proceeded and Clawson does an excellent job in explaining the new math concepts, the reason it was developed and the niche it filled in society.

[Clifford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent survey of the major milestones in the development of mathematics. Clawson doesn't discuss some of the more interesting or esoteric problems in Mathematics of the last 100 years or so (except a brief mention of Fermat's Last Theorem and Andrew Wiles), nonetheless this is a good book because it is very readable and gives a nice high-level view of the major achievements in number theory, geometry and calculus.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at the meaning behind numbers and mathematical concepts.

[Sarah Clawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤

[Rahul Rajamuthiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read for mathematical dummies