I need more time to read!!! I really do! As current student (yeah teachers can be students as well) at the Vancouver School Board, Adult Education, taking the English Studies 12, I have almost no time for literature and focus that can be placed at additional reading. Howeveeeer, I have put a lot of effort in managing my time; being student, being a math tutor, being wife and support to my husband, and being aunt (daily checking up my baby nephew).
But, (and yes, my English teacher said that we are not supposed to start our sentences with "but", but there are some tendencies in moving from that point, so I'm just gonna slide toward these tendencies haha by starting my sentences with "but", "so", and "and"), where was I... oh yes, so, here I am, proud to announce that I read a book, and even more, I'm gonna write a vlog stating my opinion on it! Ha! So, let's see. 😀
What's the point of Math?
This cute math's book's authors are Ben Ffrancon Davies and Junaid Mubeen, with Mathematical consultant Junaid Mubeen and Historical consultant Philip Parker. Published in 2020, by Penguin Random House.
First of all the quality of the print is remarkable. You can notice the hard cover that is made to last, which could be great for treasuring this book. Another remark on the image of it, are the illustrations, they are just simply suitable and not much or not too less, uncrowded yet fulfilling.
So, let's move now to the content of the book. The book is broken down in a 5 chapters:
What's the Point of Numbers and Counting?
What's the Point of Shapes and Measuring?
What's the Point of Patterns and Sequences?
What's the Point of Data and Statistics?
What's the point of Probability and Logic?
I'm not gonna discuss each of the chapters, I will just point out some interesting points from my perspective, that's probably fine as well.
Something new, that I rarely see, is the equal representation of male and female scientist, or in this case mathematicians, which I like veryyy much. I wish I had seen these illustrations and name before, in my childhood or adolescence, maybe I would have become a engineer, and not a math teacher, as I found it encouraging for females to pursue math careers, since they can identify better with the female scientist (at least that was in my case) . However, it is what is, I'm teacher.
Oh, I have to mention that with all of my list of read math book as background, and specifically book that are covering the history of math, I found new facts, ideas, and approaches for solving some problems, or ways of representing and explaining methods. For instance, the famous story how Eratosthenes mange to measure the Earth's circumference. I read that a tons of time, but after seeing the illustrations inside of this book, and reading text accompanied by it, I have glass-clear picture of it.
That's one, the other stuff are like the counting 60 by your hands (wow, such a unexposed topic, isn't is?); next thing that I like is the Roman taxes approach, which can finally relate the actual word "percent" and the meaning of it. Really nice topic that is cover up is the countability of the sets (in math terms), and handling with the infinite. Worth praising is that the explanation given on how set of natural numbers and set of even numbers have the same cardinal number (this book explains that by not using any of my words used above, not even the cardinal number.
If I need to describe the book in couple of words, I would say that is book goes roughly through the math's history, showing our modern use of math in satellites, codes, encryption of data, and showing us the math future. (I have to say, that I share the authors believes as well in that sense).
I have read some critics on this book, where they described it as full with math quizzes, math tricks, math puzzles, (I understand that using the wording "fun" , "puzzle" "trick" can attract more readers), but I would not point that as the niche of it. It has some puzzles and tricks, but this book is more of the Encyclopedia than Tips and Tricks or Puzzles and Riddles.
I have small remarks, about the choice of the mathematicians presented. The super-famous Gauss is barely mentioned, ok there is Euler, but maybe some pic of him, would be nice as well, where on the other side we can see twice Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. Maybe that's because this book was published by US/UK and they wanted more people that are part of the UK history which is absolutely reasonable, (if the book was by French publisher, and on French I would've expect to see more French scientist), or maybe, as I said, this book in my opinion is more inclined to the Informatics, Coding and Programing as math's future. Lastly, the Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz rivalism on mathematical analysis or the calculus was presented more towards the Isaac Newton side (don't forget, just my opinion), but overall representation was ok probably.
To wrap up, because I need to start reading Math Python, (yeah the future lies in coding, the author pointed out nicely) I would buy this book, and I would recommend this book to middle school students up to infinity hahah. Maybe even smaller children would read this and learn math terms by using the picuters and nice visualizations.
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