Skip to main content

Maths 1001 [Mathematics 1001] – Richard Elwes ***

Like its sister title Science 1001, this book takes on an enormous task: telling us ‘everything we need to know about mathematics in 1001 bite-sized explanations’.
It’s a handsome, if rather heavy book, somewhere between a typical hardback and a small coffee table book in size (though with floppy covers). Inside, it’s divided into 10 main sections – from the obvious ones like geometry and algebra, through to the exotics from statistics to game theory. Each section is split into topics – so in geometry you might get ‘Euclidian geometry’ and within each topic there may be around 12 entries.
In a sense, then, this is a mini-encyclopaedia of maths, though arranged by subject, rather than alphabetically. I had mixed feelings about the science entry in the series and those feelings are more extravagantly mixed than ever here. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is a useful book. A good marker of this is that, unlike many of the books that come into the review pile, I intend to keep this one. I think I will come back to it time and again to brush up on what some specific aspect of maths is. (As it is, really, a reference book, it would have been more helpful if the topics were alphabetic, but hey, what do you expect from a mathematician?)
However, as a popular science book to read from cover it has a number of deep flaws. Firstly it’s much too broken up into tiny segments. There is a bit of a flow, brought in by the way the topics are organized, but it’s very weak, and certainly doesn’t make for casual reading matter.
Secondly, far too much of the book is definitions. Time after time, a topic consists of defining what a mathematical term means. I feel a bit like Richard Feynman, who was told in a biology class, when explaining what the various bits of a cat were called, that everyone would be expected to memorise these. He said something to the effect of ‘no wonder this course takes so long’ – he didn’t see why people need to keep all those definitions in memory, and I rather feel the same about maths.
Then there’s the difficulty that the structure has in terms of dealing with some of the essentials of maths. Time after time, the author refers to the number e, without telling us what it is until over 200 pages after it is first mentioned. The assumption for a reader who hasn’t come across it might be that e is just a placeholder, the way j is used elsewhere – although many definitions here aren’t necessary, explaining what something like e is, and why it’s important, is pretty crucial.
As someone with a physics background, I particularly struggle to understand why there’s a whole section in here called ‘mathematical physics.’ No, it’s just physics. Newton’s laws don’t belong in a book on maths – there’s much too much to get your head around already without straying into a different subject.
And to top it all, I think the approach taken is often wrong. Popular science/maths, as opposed to textbooks, adds in explanation and context, not just the theory. By being so strong on definitions, there doesn’t seem to be room for this here. We find very little out about all the fascinating people involved. But even if you decide the format doesn’t allow for context and history, there is still far too little explanation. Two example out of literally hundreds: we are told ‘Up until the early 20th century, 1 was classed as prime, but no longer.’ Why? There are good reasons for this, but it is totally counter-intuitive. The number 1 seems like a prime. After all, it is only divisible by 1 and itself. We need explanation, not statement from authority. Another example is the topic on Bayes’ theorem. This is fascinating in its application, but the explanation is almost unreadable, being mostly equations, and there is nothing about its application in that section (a later one does make use of it, but doesn’t mention it is doing so). Highly frustrating.
Overall then, this is a very useful book if you dip into maths and need a quick reminder of what various things mean. It really is a great resource as a reference book. But it just doesn’t work as popular maths.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more