Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

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g. there are no straight straight lines passing through the north pole and that are parallel to the equator). When I saw this book on one of my frequent browses I thought that sounds right up my street so bought it (it had good reviews). While I was reading this book , I noticed it was published by Bloomsbury and I remembered that a few years ago they were doing rather poorly until J. Alex Bellos is witty, serious, engaging and if I may say so, utterly charming in his narration of the history of mathematics. The Babylonians, Sumerians, Greeks, Chinese, Indians and Persians all had slightly different ways of quantifying objects and areas and slightly different ways of writing down their numbers.

Mathematicians have explored ever more abstract worlds and geometries, floating in dimensions that may or may not exist and finding symmetries and patterns in hard-to-imagine shapes. From here, the book backtracks into another chapter on games, or more accurately gaming, and the evolution of probability theory, which, as any derivatives trader with an ounce of conscience can attest, is the root of the current economic downturn if you don't count Obamacare and high tax rates on corporations and the rich (ok, that was sarcasm). But as illustrative of my point as this passage may be, I only included it because it contains the word "legerdemain.It’s my journey as I travel around the world meeting characters who bring mathematical ideas to life. A conditional recommendation for people who like to brush up on their maths and not beaten up by formulas. I have had both, but even after careful reading, there were still many sections that left me puzzled. If you're in the former camp, it might be difficult to understand how anyone could be interested or impassioned by something so seemingly dry and difficult. Alex Bellos has a very good way of writing, easy to read and sprinkled, sparingly, with a bit of humour too - thoroughly enjoyable.

The style is laced with humour, but at all times, the star of the show is mathematics Ian Stewart, Prospect It is to be hoped that the uncountable delights of Bellos’s book, its verve and feeling for mathematics, convey its enchantments to a new generation.He has a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford, and is a former South America correspondent for the Guardian .