The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (Sterling Milestones)

"The Math Book" could not have come at a better time. I say this because we are living in "The Information Age" and most Americans have access to a PC; therefore, we could very well be at the crossroads of our nation's destiny. But then, every instant is most likely the crossroads of any nation's destiny. What we say, think, and do affects every tick of the clock. Which is why I believe that "The Math Book" could not have come at a better time. Among young Americans entering college, interest in mathematics, science, and engineering is declining at an alarming rate. This is not true of international students, especially among Asians. Millions upon millions of Chinese students have acquired a ferocious interest in math, science, and engineering. And some estimate that in the very near future 90 percent of all the scientists and engineers in the world will live and work in Asia. It is as if Western Civilization is passing the torch of its scientific genius to the East. And the East is more than willing to take that torch and run with it. This is why "The Math Book" needs to be in the backpack of every high school student in America. And it should even be in the backpacks of their more precocious siblings in junior high. Moreover, all of them need to take it with them when they enter college so as not to lose their nerve when they enter that first calculus class -- which is usually more difficult than they anticipated. What this book does so well is elevate numbers to the level of transcendental Splendor and makes them seem holy. But it does so gradually. Your Odyssey begins and you find yourself traveling down an ancient road whereupon you encounter the milestones that mark important mathematical breakthroughs. The milestones are chronologically arranged, and this is important because you soon discover that dice and the concept of random numbers have been around for 5000 years, but the use of knots occurred even earlier -- an astounding 100, 000 years ago -- give or take a few millenniums. You may wonder: What does this have to do with math? Well, read on and you will soon discover that knots are being used to create models of the very fabric of reality in today's world of computer assisted mathematics. Speaking of the "fabric of reality", "The Math Book" performs a magic trick by taking you into an oracle of higher mathematical understanding by stimulating your Right and Left Brain simultaneously. You open the book and you see the text on the left and often a striking visual image on the right. Thus, a single page of succinct, well-written prose distills the essence of each mathematical milestone into "linear" thought, i.e., plain English and mathematical symbols. Then on the right is the eye-catching color illustration, some of which were rendered by Teja Krasek, an artistic associate of Cliff Pickover's, and these enable you to better contemplate the haunting Splendor of Numbers. In other cases, photographs and/or reproductions of famous prints as well as artistic renderings by various visual artists further illuminate your mind as you strive for cognition after reading Pickover's explanation of the topic at hand. For instance, there is a photograph of a flaming zero on page 81 that is worth a thousand words. On page 125 you will see an example of Jos Ley's "gorgeous" fractal art after reading about Rafael Bombelli's imaginary numbers on page 124. (Imaginary numbers played a role in the production of Ley's startling work of fractal art in this case). And then on page 63 there is "Eratosthenes" by Polish artist Andreas Guskos, which is an excellent illustration for Cliff Pickover's commentary upon the Sieve of Eratosthenes on page 62. These and many other graphic designs may awaken what has been dormant in your psyche for a long time after you've read a few of Pickover's nuggets of wisdom. He's opened a vein of gold here. And before all is said and done he may turn out to be one of our better angels.

I own a ton of math books, and I couldn't be happier with The Math Book by Clifford Pickover. This book belongs on the coffee table of every math-enthusiast. Never before have I read a book that presents complex topics in math in such an intriguing, entertaining, and mostly importantly, non-boring way. Each topic is concise yet thorough, occupying only one page each, along with a picture on the opposing page. This is the kind of book that you can just flip open and learn whichever topic you happened to have randomly landed upon. Many of the pages contain not only explanations of the topic/theory/conjecture, but also interesting cocktail party-esque facts and fun puzzles related to the topic. This book also presents a very nice history of Mathematics, as the topics are listed chronologically starting from 150 Million BC (Mathematical phenomena in nature). One final thing worth noting is that this book is a fantastic value. For a large hard-cover book with high resolution images on every other page, printed on high quality glossy paper, the price of the book on Amazon is almost too good to be true. I ordered 3 of these books, one for myself and two to give away as gifts. This makes a great gift for any of your intellectual-type friends, and seems much more expensive than it is. All in all, at the end of the day, opening this book is like a fresh breath of air in contrast to my regular math studies, and that has led me to write this incredibly positive review.

This is a coffee table book of blurbs about 250 well known and relatively comprehensible milestones in mathematics, accompanied by illustrations on facing pages and cross-indexed with references to blurbs on related topics, which leaves us with a broad grasp of the role of mathematics in advancing civilization, but a necessarily fragmentary understanding of the very deep topics specifically described. Mathematically unsophisticated readers will end up with a fair idea of what a Bessel function or a zeta function looks like, some notion of what it's for, and enough of the fundamentals to convince ourselves that with a little effort we could figure out what it actually is. If we choose to do so, eight pages of bibliography reference books, periodicals, and websites for further reading. This would be a good primer for a college-bound youngster.

I thought this was simply a wonderful book. This is the first book I've ready by Clifford Pickover and seeing that he has written many others I think I will go track some of those down. This book basically covers the history of Mathematics in a very concise, but thoughtful way. Although the book is not a complete history, then again 500 pages would be barely enough to cover a complete history, but "The Math Book" covers some essential points. Pickover tried to do a couple of things when he wrote this book. Give the readers a good overview of Mathematics history and he also wanted to include Mathematical problems that interested him. In that regard the book can touch upon some little known historical elements in the field of Mathematics, which I think many will appreciate. Everyone hears the stories of Archimedes and his discovery of displacement, but there are lesser known problems and people as well and that's where I think this book manages to get a little interesting. In the past one hundred years the field of mathematics has completely exploded and a great portion of this book deals with properties found in more modern times, which I think is great because most history books I've read don't put it into the perspective of what's going on in the field now. If you're not totally math savvy, don't worry. Pickover has written this book for the layman, so even the least experienced can gain an appreciation for the world and history of mathematics. One aspect of the book that really drew me to purchase this was each entry has one page of text describing the historical nature and the page opposite is a picture. Sometimes this is a picture of the person who discovered the property, but a lot of times it is an illustration of a mathematical object, which I think people will appreciate rather than just reading a mathematical narrative trying to describe an abstract object. Working with programs like Mathematica have surely enabled Pickover to bring some of these more complex geometries to life for everyone to see. I think this is one of the aspects that sets it apart from other books. I would highly recommend this to any math enthusiast regardless of background. However, if you are looking for a very detailed history of mathematics I would recommend you seek out other books. "The Math Book" is much lighter and designed to engage readers quickly, rather than get into the real details of the history.

Fun lecture, plenty of interesting math trivia and history. Good light reading despiste the complexity of the content at times

Clifford Pickover is one of my favorite authors writing about mathematics. His newest book, The Math Book, is a math history book with 250 topics, each of which has a one page essay and a graphic, usually in color on the facing page. The eclectic list of topics chosen include the standard highlights like the Pythagorean Theorum and the Riemann Hypothesis but also games like Hex and Sprouts and even my favorite TV series, Num3ers. The essays are well written and clear and often contain humor, something which is rare in writing about mathematics. Most of the content can be understood by someone with a high school level math background. The illustrations are very well done and are especially helpful in visualizing some of the geometric objects which are described. A few of the essays require additional background in math but there are extensive references to aid in further exploration. Overall, this book is a great way to see that math is everywhere.

Based on the associated webpage, I expected a somewhat textbook style of book using illustrations to highlight the concepts. However, this book is approximately 50% illustrations. For every page of text there is a page sized illustration. For some of he pages there is also a small illustration on the page with the text. Now, some of the illustrations actually complement the text, but there are far too many instances of the illustrations being just photographs, paintings or engravings of the historical figures responsible for some of the greatest mathematical discoveries. It's hard to learn anything from a photo of a dead mathematician. Many of the illustrations that do reference the concepts could have been much improved with little effort. This is a good source for terms to look up elsewhere in more depth. This is Pickover's preferred format, so they are decent reminders or references, but thet lack the depth I seek.

Beautifully illustrated and beautifully written, this book has something for all ages and all interests; in my case, I have chosen it as a gift for my friend celebrating his 90th birthday and for my granddaughter celebrating her 17th birthday. It is appropriate for both of them because it is not only informative and intellectually stimulating, but it is vastly entertaining. My personal favorite milestone is the perfect magic tesseract, discovered by John Robert Hendricks in 1999. As an admirer of the novel, "A Wrinkle in Time," I was happy to be enlightened about the strictly mathematical definition of a tesseract. The perfect magic tesseract is even more fascinating to contemplate than the simple mathematical tesseract or the fictional one. And just think! This is only one of 250 equally fascinating milestones (see the other reviews). As frugal person, I must comment on what a bargain this beautiful book is. You can't get a cup of coffee for ten cents any more, but you can get a milestone for slightly less! (And how much more stimulating, nourishing, and lasting knowledge of these milestones is!!!)