"Mathematics" Margaret Ball

 

Publisher: Baen Books

Copyright: 1996

ISBN: 0671877550

This novel is a lot of fun to read. It concerns a former warrior woman Riva Konneva, who has taken refuge on Earth (or the Planet of the Paper-pushers as it is referred to) to help educate her daughter, and to stay away from the magician/wizard who is the father of her daughter, and not a nice person.

In the alternate reality that they came from magic is performed through the use of mathematics. This may seem a little odd to diehard fantasy readers, but it actually works very well in the way the novel is structured. It also doesn't hurt that Margaret Ball is a mathematician and computer scientist.

This novel is the second in a series, however there is no indication of this in the beginning of the book. It is listed on the cover as "A Chicks in Chainmail Novel" which does support this idea. Upon consulting the Internet Science fiction Data Base it turns out that the first book in the series is called "Career Day", well the third is called "Tales from the Slush Pile", and the fourth "Fun with Hieroglyphics". Unfortunately I haven't read any of these other three, but will definitely be keeping an eye out for them.

A very good read, With lots of humour and interesting sub-plots outside of the main one.

"The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything" by Michio Kaku

 

Publisher: double day, New York

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9780385542746

This is an extremely interesting book, that would make a fantastic introduction to high school or first year university students into the history of physics. In reading this book I have learned a lot that I probably should've learned many years ago when I took physics. Mind you that was a long time ago, and since then the strides that have been made in the field have been huge.

Dr. Kaku takes us on a journey through the history of physics by explaining the idea of unification, Einstein's search for unification, the rise of the quantum theory, a possible theory for almost everything, dark matter and dark energy, and finally string theory.

Throughout the book he explains the concepts extremely well and in plain language that virtually everybody will understand.

I haven't read any of his books previous to this but will definitely be on the lookout for the other nine he has written in the last few years.

"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!