Think Like a Maths Genius [Secrets of Mental Math] – Arthur Benjamin & Michael Shermer ***

This is the kind of book you will either find really fun or deadly dull. Flick through it, and if you are put off by seeing grids of numbers and fractions and mathematical manipulations you will drop it like a hot potato. But if you actually enjoy being able to manipulate numbers in your head, and would like to learn the tips of the trade, this is the book for you.

Starting gently with simple addition and subtraction it works up through levels of multiplication to division, before veering off into pencil and paper techniques, number memory techniques and mathematical magic like magic squares. Where a book like Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions picks off the most bizarre and exotic mathematical trickery, this is mostly bread and butter stuff, with much more focus on practical techniques and less storytelling. For this reason, it’s not as much a book to sit down and read as Martin Gardiner’s classic work, but if you enjoy working through this kind of exercise and building up your mental mathematical ability, this is the one for you.

There is no really exotic stuff here – but that’s not the point. Apart from the trip into number magic, this is real world calculation, the sort of thing we use everyday – but performed using brain cells instead of a calculator. And that can’t be a bad thing. If you find sudoku entertaining, this is very much a book for you. If you can’t see the point of filling in those little squares of numbers, and think everyone should get a life (and a calculator)… look elsewhere.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

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 ...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog