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They have no need to count lots of things and, indeed, see counting endlessly as a ludicrous activity. He is also the author of the popular math books Here's Looking at Euclid and The Grapes of Math, which were both international bestsellers. A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of mathsSunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize'Original and highly entertaining' Sunday Times'A page turner about humanity's strange, never easy and, above all, never dull relationship with numbers' New Scientist'Will leave you hooked on numbers' Daily TelegraphIn this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, and demonstrates the remarkable ways it's linked to our everyday lives.Chapters 0 tells how numbers emerged, evolving from a means of counting items necessary for survival to wholly counter-intuitive abstract concepts. Most of the anecdotes and stories about former mathematicians I already knew, but it’s nice to have them all in one place.

g. there are no straight straight lines passing through the north pole and that are parallel to the equator). But for Alex Bellos math can be inspiring and brilliantly creative and he proves it in this book that can be read easily by most non-geeks. All of our books are 100% brand new, unread and purchased directly from the publishers in bulk allowing us to pass the huge savings on to you! I did struggle with some of the ideas but very often when I asked my husband to explain I found that the author explained the whole thing in the following paragraph. In this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, and demonstrates the remarkable ways it's linked to our everyday lives.The insights and intuition you get for the most basic tenets of mathematics from this book Is just exquisite. He shines a light on the mathematical patterns in nature, and on the peculiar predictability of random behaviour. Which would provide a great segue to the book's discussion of infinity if it weren't for intervening chapters on: (1) mathematical puzzles/games-Sudoku, the Rubik's Cube; (2) number sequences--the most fascinating anecdote being the development and applications of The On-Line Encyclopaedia of Integer Sequences, a kind of numerical genome; and (3) the concepts of phi and "the golden ratio" and their relationship to Fibonacci sequences. But if showmanship is not your cup of tea, then there's a really good critical examination of Pascal's wager, an exploration of the wonders of Pascal's triangle and of course, a fitting end to the book with a mind-mangling (a term I learned from this book) discussion of Cantor's various infinities.