What do you think?
Rate this book
You Are a Mathematician
Anyone familiar with numbers, circles, straight lines and squares can become a mathematician. 'All you have to do', claims David Wells, 'is to learn to look at these objects with some insight and imagination, maybe do a few experiments, and be able to draw reasonable conclusions...' This entertaining and informative introduction to mathematics begins with the secrets of triangles and the dazzling patterns formed by even the simplest numbers. It examines polyhedral cheeses, reverse Koch snowflakes and Rabbi Moses' box, takes readers on 'a journey from the Greek mathematicians to quantum theory' and concludes with a challenging adventure game.
- GenresMathematicsNonfiction
432 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 1995
3 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
David G. Wells
26 books10 followersDavid Wells is a writer on mathematics and puzzles.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 25, 2017
A different refreshing look at mathematics.
Caution : You will need a pencil to go through it and also you might end up scribbling all over that book so make sure its not library property.
Caution : You will need a pencil to go through it and also you might end up scribbling all over that book so make sure its not library property.
March 28, 2010
Like most books in this genre, You Are a Mathematician attempts to communicate some of the joy mathematicians find in math, as well as how math is actually done, to a lay audience, and occasionally does a fair job of it.
One thing that bothered me about this book was the fact that Wells leaves a lot of details unexplained when they really shouldn't be. It's probably fine to assume people know basic trigonometry even in a book aimed at the complete layperson, but it's a bit silly to assume, for example, that people know why \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}. He spends a few pages explaining where the 6 comes from, but completely neglects to explain the π².
Another is the intense focus on Euclidean geometry, probably because that's easy to illustrate and people like pictures. I imagine that for many people, though, this will just take them back to their middle school mathematics classes and remind them why they hated it in the first place. He ventures into other areas quite often, fortunately, though it's sometimes clear he doesn't have too firm a grasp on some of these areas, and he always takes it back to triangles and lines.
That aside, though, the book is certainly a treasure trove of mathematical trivia, even if much of it will probably already be known to the kind of person who reads pop sci books on mathematics.
The choose-your-own-adventure bit at the end of the book is probably the most interesting part of it; it demonstrates how a mathematician's train of thought can work and take him in vastly different directions based on which thread he pursues, on a level that's easily accessible to the interested layperson.
So, not the best book in its genre, but certainly not a bad one.
One thing that bothered me about this book was the fact that Wells leaves a lot of details unexplained when they really shouldn't be. It's probably fine to assume people know basic trigonometry even in a book aimed at the complete layperson, but it's a bit silly to assume, for example, that people know why \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}. He spends a few pages explaining where the 6 comes from, but completely neglects to explain the π².
Another is the intense focus on Euclidean geometry, probably because that's easy to illustrate and people like pictures. I imagine that for many people, though, this will just take them back to their middle school mathematics classes and remind them why they hated it in the first place. He ventures into other areas quite often, fortunately, though it's sometimes clear he doesn't have too firm a grasp on some of these areas, and he always takes it back to triangles and lines.
That aside, though, the book is certainly a treasure trove of mathematical trivia, even if much of it will probably already be known to the kind of person who reads pop sci books on mathematics.
The choose-your-own-adventure bit at the end of the book is probably the most interesting part of it; it demonstrates how a mathematician's train of thought can work and take him in vastly different directions based on which thread he pursues, on a level that's easily accessible to the interested layperson.
So, not the best book in its genre, but certainly not a bad one.
June 8, 2010
I'm still trying to work my way through this book. My math skills aren't what they used to be as I haven't had any formal math classes in about half of my life. I'm trying to brush up on a few things, particularly on computer-based algebra systems.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews