Math Without Numbers
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'The whizz-kid making maths supercool. . . A brilliant book that takes everything we know (and fear) about maths out of the equation - starting with numbers' The Times
'A cheerful, chatty, and charming trip through the world of mathematics. . . Everyone should read this delightful book' Ian Stewart, author of Do Dice Play God?
The only numbers in this book are the page numbers.
The three main branches of abstract math - topology, analysis, and algebra - turn out to be surprisingly easy to grasp. Or at least, they are when our guide is a math prodigy. With forthright wit and warm charm, Milo Beckman upends the conventional approach to mathematics, inviting us to think creatively about shape and dimension, the infinite and the infinitesimal, symmetries, proofs, and all how all these concepts fit together. Why is there a million dollar prize for counting shapes? Is anything bigger than infinity? And how is the 'truth' of mathematics actually decided?
A vivid and wholly original guide to the math that makes the world tick and the planets revolve, Math Without Numbers makes human and understandable the elevated and hypothetical, allowing us to clearly see abstract math for what it is: bizarre, beautiful, and head-scratchingly wonderful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beckman, a math prodigy who captained the New York City Math team at age 13, debuts with a playful paean to the pleasures of studying higher math. Arguing "that everything plants, love, music, everything can (in theory) be understood in terms of math," he uses analogies, puzzles, and formal logic but no equations to tackle intriguing questions from various fields. For example, from topology, "geometry's looser and trippier cousin," he asks when two shapes can be considered the same, producing the surprising answer that it's when one can be transformed "into the other by stretching and squeezing, without any ripping or gluing." Another question revolves around infinities namely, are some larger than others? Moving on to dimensions, he considers why structures with more than three, though nonexistent, are both theoretically possible and intellectually useful for mathematicians. Beckman's conviction that math provides the tools to understand everything gets its best showing when he tackles abstract algebra, explaining, among a blizzard of examples, how modeling, where "math connects to the real world," can theoretically predict the outcomes of systems like economics. Readers with an abundance of curiosity and the time to puzzle over Beckman's many examples, riddles, and questions, will make many fascinating discoveries.
