Mathematics for Everyman
Many people scare of the
school mathematics. They want to ignore an endless sequences and formulae, because they can’t interpret them. It is not necessary, however, that they consider mathematics, like a ’necessary bad’. Let them beleive it: Mathematics can be a wonderful world, a new recognition, which may develop it our logic and another cognitive abilities, it can be intriguing and entertaining at the same time. It was thought-provoking for the previous century''s big mathematician, Rózsa Péter in order to wrote it the Playing with Infinity.
In the introduction she recommend her work for people who interested in mathematics, but they simply don’t know how to begin it. Single concepts are introduced it step by step without using formulae, from the fundamental operations to the indefinite integral. What is the secret of this book’s success? Well, an author is an competent mathematican with educational experience. She try to make it understand with disappointed ones through everyday examples. What does not show the author versatility better, than a hungarian poem citation (Mihály Babits) introduces algebraic equations, and a Russian novel helps to understand complex numbers. With this approach, so complicated problems become more cleary, than the problem of circle-squaring or the deficiency of the
number theory.
When we read this book, we may recognize, that mathematics is not an isolated
discipline, but it can be an important and useful helper for another disciplines. We can recoginize, although it exists many study of mathemathics and it has connections with other disciplines, it forms a whole one. It is also a relevant statement of this book. At the last part of book the author points many times to unresolved problems of mathematics, in this manner she dispels many misbeleives onto discipline.
Since the work was published in 1943, it has become
popular increasingly from young to aged ones. In second-hand and regular bookshops, and on the web equally can be found. I strongly recommend it for anybody, who wants to become more familiar with mathematics.
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