The 15-Minute Mathematician

by Anne Rooney

Part of the Arcturus series, Ideas to Save Your Life, The 15-Minute Mathematician introduces the reader to the main ideas of mathematics. Mathematics is all around us. It governs how information is presented to us and how we understand it. It underpins all science and has thus been responsible for mankind's incredible progress throughout the ages. This is a fun introduction to the subject of mathematics.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2015

About the author

Anne Rooney gained a degree and then a PhD in medieval literature from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching medieval English and French literature at the universities of Cambridge and York, she left to pursue a career as a freelance writer. She has written many books for adults and children on a variety of subjects, including literature and history. She lives in Cambridge and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Essex.

Reviews

[Riley Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took math through university, being so silly as to think I could minor in it (I couldn't...not quite). But since I graduated I have forgotten so much of the more advanced math that I did understand, and everything I partially understood has utterly vanished - over a decade later, it's as if I didn't take 10 university level math courses.
I recognize that I shouldn't be the audience of this book, but I am, given that I have forgotten most of what I learned. Thought his book is written for a UK audience, it's easily decipherable to a North American audience as well. It's a good, brief summary of various applied math topics (no theoretical stuff here) and is a pretty good way to attain a basic math literacy in a matter of hours (or less). It's quite a useful book and I wish that some of my high school teachers and university professors could explain this stuff this well.
If I have one criticism, it is the way the book is laid out: basically as a bunch of topics with little to connect them; it doesn't proceed in a logical way to my mind, and it feels like you have to jump around from topic to topic and back again, as you proceed through it. That is to say, one chapter does not always build upon the previous chapters. As someone trained on textbooks, that can be a little weird.
But this is still a valuable resource for anyone who wants some math literacy but doesn't have the time or inclination to actually learn it.