"The Joy of Mathematics: Marvels, Novelties, and Neglected Gems That Are Rarely Taught in Math Class" by Alfred E. Posamentier

Publisher:Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, 2017.

ISBN:9781633882973 

Characteristics:319 pages :,illustrations ;,23 cm

You must admit that “The Joy of Mathematics" is at the very least an intriguing title. I doubt very much if there's many people that really consider mathematics to be joyful, especially when you consider the way it's being taught in schools today. When I was in school everything was taught by rote memorization, learning your times tables memorizing theorums, doing problems, etc. I have no idea how many hundreds of times my various teachers in grades two through four made me and the rest of my classmates write out the times tables from 1 x 1 right through to 12 x 12. I guess though in all fairness it did work, but it was definitely not joyful. I’m not going to get into the fun of Algebra.

Now if I had had this book, or very least if my teachers had had this book I'm fairly sure that math would've been much more fun and interesting. 

On the other hand I loved geometry and trigonometry as they had practical applications. Good ol’ Pythagorus and his theorem is something I’ve used many times and the same goes for trigonometry. Calculus wasn’t offered in my school way-back-when, but seeing as it has practical applications I would likely have been interested in that as well.

The authors touch on a lot of different topics such as arithmetic novelties, algebraic explanations of accepted concepts, geometric curiosities, probability, and some common sense mathematics. And they do it in a way that is interesting to read, and they give great explanations and examples showing you why and how it works.

I would definitely recommend this book to any math teacher, as getting students to be interested in math can be a challenge, and as one of my math teachers told our class once “There is not a single thing you will do in your life that doesn’t involve math, and if you can prove me otherwise you automatically pass this course.”

So far I haven’t found anything to prove him wrong!