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Numbers in Minutes
The quickest explanation of math, in 200 essential numbers.
Why 60 seconds in a minute? Who invented zero? What exactly is pi? Why do mathematicians hunt prime numbers? And how can you get a number bigger than infinity?
To find out, take a tour through 200 important, fascinating and unusual numbers - the easy and entertaining way to grasp mathematics.
Numbers in Minutes demystifies the math surrounding the key numbers zero, 1-40, negatives, percentages, prime numbers, fractions, decimals, pi, exponentials, imaginary numbers, squares and cubes, roots and powers, Fibonacci numbers, the golden ratio, millions and trillions, a googol, 'perfect,' 'kissing,' 'vampire' and 'weird' numbers, infinity, infinity+1 and other sizes of infinity...
Every number is explained in a few short paragraphs with a helpful picture, making the maths simple to understand and remember.
Why 60 seconds in a minute? Who invented zero? What exactly is pi? Why do mathematicians hunt prime numbers? And how can you get a number bigger than infinity?
To find out, take a tour through 200 important, fascinating and unusual numbers - the easy and entertaining way to grasp mathematics.
Numbers in Minutes demystifies the math surrounding the key numbers zero, 1-40, negatives, percentages, prime numbers, fractions, decimals, pi, exponentials, imaginary numbers, squares and cubes, roots and powers, Fibonacci numbers, the golden ratio, millions and trillions, a googol, 'perfect,' 'kissing,' 'vampire' and 'weird' numbers, infinity, infinity+1 and other sizes of infinity...
Every number is explained in a few short paragraphs with a helpful picture, making the maths simple to understand and remember.
416 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2019
5 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
About the author
Julia Collins
2 books1 followerJulia Collins spent five years at the University of Edinburgh (UK) as a lecturer and public engagement officer in mathematics before moving to Melbourne in 2016 to take up a job at the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) on the CHOOSEMATHS project. She moved to Perth and joined ECU in September 2019. Julia is also the author of two general-interest books on mathematics: Get Smart: Maths (2018) and Numbers in Minutes (2019) and is the founder of Maths Craft Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 20, 2020
Excellent little book which consists of 200 very short articles about mathematics, each linked to a particular number. Some more interesting than others; some easier to understand than others; some which provoke you to go off on your own tangent and think and scribble a bit. One a day rather than cover to cover worked for me and I'll be making a second trip through it before long.
April 10, 2022
It is a good book that tells you the short stories of 200 numbers, surrounding the key numbers including the golden ratio,prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers etc. This helps readers to learn the fundamentals of mathematics quickly. It is spilt into three sections, which contain whole numbers, decimals and fractions, and negative numbers. The book provides detail explanations in every number with helpful pictures, which improves my understanding in mathematics and making it more simple to learn, study and remember.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2023
Let me begin with an aside. In my Web search to learn more about the author, I discovered Julia C. Collins [1842-1865], an essayist and schoolteacher, whose The Curse of Caste was among the first novels published by African-American women. Among the many other Julia Collins search hits is the esteemed author of the book under review who earned a doctorate in 4D knot theory from U. Edinburgh and proceeded to become Outreach Officer at the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute. Among other activities, she is passionate about encouraging girls and young women to participate in maths.
Collins presents numbers in three sections, sandwiched between a short introduction and a glossary.
- Whole Numbers (pp. 8-255)
- Decimals and Fractions (pp. 256-387)
- Negatives, Non-Real Numbers and Infinities (pp. 388-407)
The book is printed in 5"-by-5" pocket size. To give you a taste of the 200 numbers in this book, let me presents a couple of examples from the first section and one example each from the other two sections.
The number 40: There are forty possible 2-digit endings for a prime number; the 60 endings of the form xy, with y equaling 5 or an even digit, are easily ruled out. Among the first 10,000 primes, 57 is the most-frequent ending. After the first billion primes, 47 takes over.
The number 561: The smallest Carmichael number (numbers that look prime through the lens of a common primality testing known as Fermat's Little Theorem) has factors 3, 11, and 17.
The number 0.7405: A 16th-century explorer wondered whether he was stacking the cannonballs most efficiently, so he asked around and the question found its way to Johannes Keppler. Although everyone agreed that stacking in layers, the way oranges are stacked at a fruit stand, is most-efficient, it took mathematicians ~400 years to prove what became known as Keppler Conjecture.
The number –1/12: There are many proofs that that the Ramanujan Sum 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + … equals –1/12, which is a doubly-absurd result for its finiteness and negative sign. A notebook of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan contains the "proof" shown below. With today's rigorous mathematics, we know that we cannot add multiples of infinite sums together, without running into potential contradictions.
c = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + …
4c = 4 + 8 + 12 + …
c – 4c = –3c = 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 +5 – 6 + … = 1/(1 + 1)^2 = 1/4
c = –1/12
Collins presents numbers in three sections, sandwiched between a short introduction and a glossary.
- Whole Numbers (pp. 8-255)
- Decimals and Fractions (pp. 256-387)
- Negatives, Non-Real Numbers and Infinities (pp. 388-407)
The book is printed in 5"-by-5" pocket size. To give you a taste of the 200 numbers in this book, let me presents a couple of examples from the first section and one example each from the other two sections.
The number 40: There are forty possible 2-digit endings for a prime number; the 60 endings of the form xy, with y equaling 5 or an even digit, are easily ruled out. Among the first 10,000 primes, 57 is the most-frequent ending. After the first billion primes, 47 takes over.
The number 561: The smallest Carmichael number (numbers that look prime through the lens of a common primality testing known as Fermat's Little Theorem) has factors 3, 11, and 17.
The number 0.7405: A 16th-century explorer wondered whether he was stacking the cannonballs most efficiently, so he asked around and the question found its way to Johannes Keppler. Although everyone agreed that stacking in layers, the way oranges are stacked at a fruit stand, is most-efficient, it took mathematicians ~400 years to prove what became known as Keppler Conjecture.
The number –1/12: There are many proofs that that the Ramanujan Sum 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + … equals –1/12, which is a doubly-absurd result for its finiteness and negative sign. A notebook of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan contains the "proof" shown below. With today's rigorous mathematics, we know that we cannot add multiples of infinite sums together, without running into potential contradictions.
c = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + …
4c = 4 + 8 + 12 + …
c – 4c = –3c = 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 +5 – 6 + … = 1/(1 + 1)^2 = 1/4
c = –1/12
March 7, 2023
Numbers in Minutes isn't a bad book. It's just kinda boring unless you're a numberphile. Would be good for an older elementary student because it's filled with a plethora of facts.
April 18, 2025
It was certainly the quickest explanation of mathematics in 200 essential numbers. This will come in handy. Very interesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews